While updating the address book on my cell phone this weekend I realized that some names did not so much as ring a bell anymore. It took some spring cleaning before the list turned representative of the people I do keep in touch with even if on a very irregular basis. Where the name made sense, the work number was at least two jobs too old. Chances were, I looked it up from a post-it note stuck in my cube.
Not surprisingly therefore, several numbers I call frequently are not even on my address book - I've made do with the saved caller-ids without bothering to assign names. The state of my social fabric clearly leaves much to be desired. A constant visual reminder of where (not that an analysis of why would hurt) it is fraying would be most helpful. I'm hoping Gmail will do something similar with all of my e-mail contacts.
The Social Fabric is a representation of your social world, displayed as a single visual array on your cellular phone. It does not replace your address book or calendar but keeps you subtly informed about which relationships are prospering, which you have neglected, and the overall state of your social fabric. (photo to be credited to Steven Blyth)
via interaction-ivrea
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t
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