Wear Sunscreen is perhaps one of those extremely rare video clips with a rather strong, inspiring and incredibly humanising message one could bump into and that, throughout the course of the years, it gets better and better. Just like wine, it gets better as we age. I can’t hardly believe how that speech was put together in 1997 and how, 17 years later, it is still ringing much truer than ever before. To the point where, if you get to spend about seven minutes to watch through it, it will transport you to way back then and make you wonder what have you been up to in all of those years. Well, I am not too sure about you, but I have been looking up.
One of the many reasons why I have been looking forward to writing again on this blog was the opportunity to pick up a theme I decided to introduce at the beginning of the year around the topic of Humanise and which time and time again I keep getting constant reminders about the need for helping me balance all of those extreme negatives happening out there with plenty of extreme positives, as often as I possibly can. It may well be my eternal optimist coming along, who knows. What I do know though is we live in a rather complex, hyperconnected, fast-paced, troubled world, with huge potential, but perhaps with plenty of things more messed up than what we, human beings, can possibly cope and deal with in both a coherent and cohesive manner. And, yet, here we are. Trying to make the most of out of it. And trying hard.
I am not too sure whether we are succeeding in those efforts of sense making of the world around us, but I can certainly assure you we are trying, aren’t we? There seems to be this collective sense that keeps building up more and more over time about something needing to change. Wanting to change. We may not be sure, just yet, what would need to change, although I can imagine plenty of people out there surely have a hunch or two in terms of hinting what those changes may well be, not just from a business perspective, but perhaps also from a societal one. And they may be right.
That’s essentially what I was thinking about when I first bumped into this absolutely stunning video clip under the suggestive heading of “Look Up”, put together by Gary Turk. To me, the perfect allegory that describes pretty much today’s world of over-sharing under the perverse FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) and which could be the natural successor of Wear Sunscreen to show us there is another way. Yes, it is that good. To me, bridging almost on the verge of nailing down our meandering experience of our mere existence in today’s hyperconnected world, where we always appear to be glued to a mobile device, whatever that may well be, disconnecting and switching off from the rest of the physical world.
You see? When you grab your mobile phone 150 times per day, at a minimum, according to some recent research on Digital Trends, I guess we can now say we do have a bit of a problem, even though some folks may not agree with that statement, like, for instance, my good friend Euan Semple who tweeted just recently:
If we really need Look Up to tell us to get a life we are in more trouble than I thought…
— Euan Semple (@euan) May 8, 2014
Or George Siemens on this other reflection on the same topic:
Watched the Look Up video: https://t.co/q1yjV0VAz2 Didn’t like it. Don’t tell me, with tech, that tech sucks. emotion manipulators
— George Siemens (@gsiemens) May 5, 2014
Yes, I can sense the negative sentiment in George’s comments when he mentions “emotion manipulators”, specially, when the video clip was socialised through technology itself. Oh, yes, I see the irony of it, too! But then again, where do you go to spread a message worth while sharing, when by the end of this year there would be 3.2 billion people on earth connected to the Internet? Wouldn’t you go to where your potential audience may well be or already is? Nearly 30 million views (at the point of writing this article) would probably confirm that …
Yes, I can also see Euan’s commentary that we probably don’t need no stinking video clip to tell us to get a life more than we already know we all need. But then again, if you look into it, some times we, human beings, like to hear what we already know deep inside rings true and be told by outsiders that very same story we created ourselves in the first place. That’s how consultants, analysts and vendors typically operate today when interacting with customers, who are continuing to look for that outsider’s advice to help validate what they themselves, deep inside, know already.
At the end of the day Look Up is an allegory, a beautiful metaphor, reminding us every single second, of how things may well need to be in order for us to humanise our very own existence, once again. At least, that’s how I see it. It’s an alluring poem, if you would want to. An inspiring story that does have a message, one that may not be obvious at first, but that when looking into it closer it would help us realise the huge potential the Social Web has got nowadays for each and everyone of us: that is, how technology helps us become more human, not necessarily by making extensive use of it, but by considering it just an enabler of sorts to focus on what we should be focusing all along, whether at work, or in our personal lives: our relationships.
I know Look Up is the kind of video clip that, throughout the course of many years to come, just like Wear Sunscreen has done for me over time, will act as a constant, gentle reminder, as a technology sticky-note of sorts, that there is a wonderful and rather beautiful world out there to enjoy and that technology’s role, if any, should be that one of helping augment the already existing real life experiences. Acting as a substitute will not work. It should not work.
That’s perhaps the main reason why on the article around The Path of Self-Discovery, that I published just recently, I mentioned how now that I am an independent freelancer and seem to have plenty more free time for other things than just being hooked to devices here and there, I am spending plenty more time outdoors investing my time, energy and a good effort on nurturing those offline social networking activities: connecting AND relating to other people.
Experience the world. Capture it with those precious moments in small chunks called photographs (Or video snippets, it won’t matter) to then share them into the virtual world as an opportunity to act as an aftertaste of what happened before. Enjoy your life to the fullest, because you never know how long it will last. So we may as well make the most out of it, don’t you think? Understanding that there is a great chance that technology will always be there, but we may not. After all, every day, we only have got 86.400$ in our bank, and that’s a finite resource:
Why waste time? Live inspired… Today and always!
Written by Luis Suarez
Chief Emergineer, People Enabler and Charter Member of Change Agents Worldwide and a well seasoned Social / Open Business evangelist and 2.0 practitioner with over 15 years of experience on knowledge management, collaboration, learning, online communities and social networking for business; and has been living, since February 2008, a (work) life without email challenging the status quo of how knowledge workers collaborate and share their knowledge by promoting openness, transparency, trust, sustainable growth, engagement, connectedness and overall smart work. He can also be contacted over in Twitter at @elsua or Google Plus.
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