Gustible - under the rubric of [$_SELF]

Prompted by the happy re-connections with old friends that Facebook has lately made possible, I have been inspired to look for even more long lost friends by using the tools of our age – google, pipl, linkedin and of course Facebook.

Some people have been surprisingly easy to find. Often because they work in the information technology domain, and are  aware of (and sometimes even power users) of our dearly beloved “Web 2.0″ applications.  In the process of searching, I have started noticing a particularly  strong boundary between those who can be traced digitally, and those who cannot. This boundary is the year 1967 (give or take a year or so). People born earlier than 1967 (or 1968…69, give or take I said) leave very few traces on the web, unless they fall into the category of information technology professionals I mentioned earlier. This boundary has proved to be a very unfortunate boundary for my efforts to locate certain people – I was born in 1967, and many of my friends are of a similar age. I, of course, am part of the IT pro group. My tracks are everywhere – a simple Google search will suffice to find me, and Pipl can probably supply my shoe size with a little coaxing.

I should clarify something here – the points I make in this post probably do not apply in the United States – but it does apply to the other 6.3 billion of us.

To continue – as little as a decade ago I would probably not have attempted to reestablish a connection with lost friends using web tools. In 1999 there existed no social networks (not by that name, nor by that marketing mantra). Academics may have been visible on mostly closed academic networks. No – ten years ago I would have used personal contacts, possible a series of phone calls to try and find my friends. Now Facebook is where I start. So why don’t I do this today…?

The first reason is simply that ten years ago, the period of time since I had last had contact with this particular person was much less. Secondly – I would hardly know where to start today – I have lost contact with many of the people I would have phoned to start my search. And thirdly, most importantly – it is REALLY annoying that I cannot find this person using the web. Just simply annoying.

So here’s the deal – this post is a benign honeypot, so to speak. Everyone Googles themselves at some point. Since Charda (my lost friend) is virtually invisible on the web, it should be fairly easy to own the keyword “Charda van Schalkwyk”….therefore I am seeding the post with tags  and stuff – in the hope of attracting Charda van Schalkwyk’s attention. Charda – meer as een persoon wonder wat van jou geword het!! Kontak my!!!

I (and others) have found traces of you in Iceland, at a university in the United States, an abandoned Amazon profile, and on strange Japanese websites. Looking forward to hearing from you Charda

PS – I don’t REALLY think you are a Luddite..really not.