Facebook, Twitter and Connecting to My Past

I graduated from High School in 1980. I've missed countless reunions and not stayed in touch with anyone from my West Coast past at St. James Catholic Elementary School, St. John Bosco, Palos Verdes High School, Stanford, UCSF, UC Berkeley, or Harbor-UCLA. As I approach 50, I have a nostalgic curiosity about what happened to my friends, my competitors, and my detractors.

In the era before social networking I would have had to fly to California for my 30th reunion in 2010. However, we're now in the era of Facebook, Twitter and complete connectivity that I believe has eliminated the need for reunions or other reasons to rediscover your past.

Over the last month, Facebook and Twitter have reconnected me to the 1980's.

My best friend from High School, Will Snow, an engineer at Sun, has linked to me on Facebook and updated me about his two young children, his hobbies and his life in Northern California.

Will's High School girlfiend, Katherine Hoy, linked to me and told me about her family, her life in the UK and her planned move back to the US.

My next door neighbor and grade school friend, Mark Poncher, linked to me and told me about his career in theater, as an event producer, and life in Southern California.

My elementary school friend from 4th grade, John Webber, linked to me and talked about his family and career.

My Stanford friend, Rod Beckstrom, linked to me and described his career as Director of the National Cyber Security Center in Homeland Security.

On Facebook I have nearly 200 friends and on Twitter I have nearly 300 followers (who are these people?). I've passed 500 connections on Plaxo and LinkedIn. Every day, I'm updated on the actions of nearly 1000 people that I've been close to for the past 50 years.

My email signature gives everyone easy access to my social networking sites:

John D. Halamka MD
CIO, Beth Israel Deaconess and Harvard Medical School
Blog: http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/people/John-D-Halamka/666982008
Twitter: http://twitter.com/jhalamka
Plaxo: http://jhalamka.myplaxo.com/
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/bb0/804

The end result of all this is that my digital life transcends time, jobs, and geography. I can just as easily talk to Harvard colleague as I can an elementary school lunch buddy. There is no need for a reunion, no need for nostalgia, and no need for a scrapbook of 40 year old photographs.

Social networking enables me to constantly live in the present, linked to the contacts of my life with constant updates, personal messages, and reconnections.

I do wonder what happened to a few folks in my High School past - David Kratz, Phil Talbert, Glenn Seidman, Susan Kattlove, and Hillary Stoltz.

Chances are they will appear on one of my social networking sites soon.

The reunion is dead. The memories of the past are now the lunch date of the future.