Williamsburg was not our first thought when Tom, our son and his wife, and I tried to figure out a winter break destination. For a while, the Florida Keys was the front-runner because it was warm and three of the four of us had never been there, but the cost and distance led us to brainstorm closer spots, and ultimately Williamsburg won out.
Come to find out, we were not the only ones to reach that decision. The staff members we talked to said that the week after Christmas was one of Colonial Williamsburg's peak weeks for visitors, and I could see why, since it's not that long a drive from a number of major US cities, has tons of activities, and the odds are that the weather will be somewhat better than it is in the Northeast. Not for us, though--much of a five-inch snowfall remained on the ground, revealing a new truth about the colonists: they don't like to shovel snow and aren't going to waste valuable salt on it either.
As we trudged through the ice and snow along the miracle mile of Virginia's journey toward liberty, I distracted myself from my paranoia about falling and breaking an ankle by trying to define for myself the difference that social networking as we know it would have had on the Virginia branch of the Founding Fathers back during that pivotal time when they were deciding the future of their relationship with Great Britain. I think my subconscious was recalling a parody of FaceBook that featured a Status + Comments of Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, etc., but I was trying to be serious about it.
My conclusion was that Virginia's decision to take actions that in effect supported the Boston Tea Party and to author its own constitution, a precursor to the US Constitution, was a model of effective social networking and that Twitter and FaceBook probably would have contributed very little and might have undercut the effort:
- The communications methods of the day enabled the colonists to have a surprisingly thorough understanding up and down the eastern seaboard of the central issues relating to their colonies' interactions with England. A range of opinions was continuously discussed and debated, even after Virginia's colonial governor disbanded the House of Burgesses. Twitter was not required for word to spread quickly to Virginians about the Boston Tea Party or the taxes that led up to it.
- The young history major who guided our tour through the Capitol made the point that Virginia's colonial leaders weren't all that original in their revolutionary thoughts--that they drew heavily from the great political thinkers of Europe like Locke and Rousseau. This suggested to me that even the primitive circumstances of the American colonies still allowed for the transmittal and discussion of important ideas.
- Even when the Members of Virginia's House of Burgesses decided to support independence, they had plenty of disagreements among themselves, and the dissolution of the House of Burgesses forced them into meeting secretly. I can't help but think that Twitter and/or FB would have made these disagreements even more difficult to resolve by turning them into soundbites; by adding more opinions to weed through from well-meaning "friends;" by undercutting the perceived need to meet face-to-face (which I think was critical to coming to closure); and by increasing the colonial leaders' vulnerability to being caught in the act of sedition, since one false sharing of a FB chat or Twitter trend would have provided the British hard evidence of the full scope of the plotting against them.
My musings got me over the precarious footing I faced in Williamsburg, and it also increased my respect for the sophistication of thought and actions of a relatively large number of people in colonial times who sought and achieved change. I can't really say that I'm as impressed with their current political heirs--all of whom are well-equipped with FB, Twitter, and every other social networking tool. Of course, I love FB and am slowly acclimating myself to Twitter, but I don't think we should assume that the spectacular increase in the quantity of communication through these tools has led to a net increase in the quality of communication.
Williamsburg was not our first thought when Tom, our son and his wife, and I tried to figure out a winter break destination. For a while, the Florida Keys was the front-runner because it was warm and three of the four of us had never been there, but the cost and distance led us to brainstorm closer spots, and ultimately Williamsburg won out.
Come to find out, we were not the only ones to reach that decision. The staff members we talked to said that the week after Christmas was one of Colonial Williamsburg's peak weeks for visitors, and I could see why, since it's not that long a drive from a number of major US cities, has tons of activities, and the odds are that the weather will be somewhat better than it is in the Northeast. Not for us, though--much of a five-inch snowfall remained on the ground, revealing a new truth about the colonists: they don't like to shovel snow and aren't going to waste valuable salt on it either.
As we trudged through the ice and snow along the miracle mile of Virginia's journey toward liberty, I distracted myself from my paranoia about falling and breaking an ankle by trying to define for myself the difference that social networking as we know it would have had on the Virginia branch of the Founding Fathers back during that pivotal time when they were deciding the future of their relationship with Great Britain. I think my subconscious was recalling a parody of FaceBook that featured a Status + Comments of Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, etc., but I was trying to be serious about it.
My conclusion was that Virginia's decision to take actions that in effect supported the Boston Tea Party and to author its own constitution, a precursor to the US Constitution, was a model of effective social networking and that Twitter and FaceBook probably would have contributed very little and might have undercut the effort:
My musings got me over the precarious footing I faced in Williamsburg, and it also increased my respect for the sophistication of thought and actions of a relatively large number of people in colonial times who sought and achieved change. I can't really say that I'm as impressed with their current political heirs--all of whom are well-equipped with FB, Twitter, and every other social networking tool. Of course, I love FB and am slowly acclimating myself to Twitter, but I don't think we should assume that the spectacular increase in the quantity of communication through these tools has led to a net increase in the quality of communication.
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