POST CARDS FROM THE MUSE

The Modern Time Machine

By Nandy Ekle

A show of hands; who here gets aggravated with Facebook. It’s okay, you can tell me. I get irritated myself. It’s not the periodic changes and up dates. I understand that things in the technological world constantly need to change. After all, we wouldn’t be where we are today if it didn’t. I also understand that sometimes tiny, minute little things slip between the cracks and that one small dot or slash mark can mean a melt down of enormous proportions.

But I’ll just tell you, the thing that aggravates me is when Facebook decides whose statuses I should be looking at and whose are inconsequential. I accept friendships for a reason—I’m interested in what these new friends have to say.

Now, I also work in a place where I cannot get on Facebook during the day. Therefore when I get home in the evenings, I have a whole day of statuses to go through. And I don’t want to skip around or be transported backward or forward in the day’s news. I want it in order and complete.

During one of these episodes of trying to catch up, the idea suddenly occurred to me that this particular form of social media is as near to a time machine as I’ve ever seen. When I get home in the evenings I am able to go back in time to the start of the day and read to the end of the day. I can even go back further than that. And good friends of mine who have passed on, I can visit their Facebook pages and read their previous statuses, which is almost as good as calling them back to my side.

Using modern amenities of today’s world can open up possibilities to all sorts of abilities for our characters. If there’s a new technological device, learn all you can about it. It will enhance your story and make it believable for your readers.

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Tag words: Facebook, time machine, technological device, up date