[Ccass]

If you are reading this topic, I am kind of preaching to the choir but we're sending my blog out to the entire membership Monday. There's a lot to absorb here. It may be a little bit long winded but I feel it is very important topic. I would like all your collective feedback.

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Here we are in the middle of 2018. 2018! Say that out loud to yourself. Two Thousand eighteen! For most of us growing up in the 50's, 60's and 70's and beyond, watching Sci-fi movies of the obliteration of the world in a variety of ways from an errant asteroid, to launching Nuclear weapons, to alien invasions, was normal. But in reality we're way past the time even real life prognosticators like Nostradamus and false Prophet Harold Camping thought we'd ever make it.
In contrast to all that doom and gloom, the world has experienced some incredible advancements especially in medicine and technology. Life expectancy is a lot longer. Who would have thought that there would be 2.5 billion 'personal computers' in everyone's pocket (smart phones). Electric and driverless cars are just around the corner from being the norm. So even if you are a cynic about the world today, at least you have to admit if we are going down, we’re going down with guns blazing!

But for all the apparent impressive technology, there are potential hidden traps. We're living longer, but look at all the quality of life financial health care issues living longer has created. We have the world at our fingertips but, look at the challenges it has presented in the way our young people interact with each other. There are plenty more examples, but I think these are two good examples.

Well, by now I may have lost you and that would be a shame because I'm just getting to my point! Alas, I do not have the answers for these monumental issues. However, I have clearly uncovered a piece of technology that is doing a real disservice to our Pontiac hobby. Our hobby is nose deep in one of those hidden traps I mentioned.

Facebook!

When you see that word it may conjure up visions of a 9 foot tall bear dancing to Pit Bull's song Fireball or maybe Walmart people or a hilarious photo caption. You might also think about what great therapy it is to have so many 'buds' supporting and pulling for you when you've hit bad times. And for these reasons and many more, we can thank Facebook.

So if FB is great for social and entertainment purposes, how on earth is FB hurting our hobby?
It is a poor way to store, organize and preserve information!

There are at least 100 disconnected Pontiac sites on FB. If I looked hard enough, there's probably a Linden Green 1967 GTO owners site! Once I found it, I'd be able to share good times with my 4 other Linden Green GTO owners from around the world! Oh, but wait..... 8 hours after a member took an hour to post an interesting story about his uncle at Pontiac being the guy that was in charge of selecting the car colors for 1967 Pontiacs, it's lost in a sea of posts never to be found again! And even if you could find it, it’s only being shared with a tiny part of those who would be very interested in seeing it.

FB is NOT the place to store and organize valuable information! By now, surely we've all noticed this? Collectively, as enthusiasts, we all have something to offer the hobby. We have experiences, knowledge, hunches, advice, pictures, drawings, stories and more. Imagine if you could put all of this in your own time capsule. Now take that capsule and add it to a landfill of thousands of other capsules just like it. Is anyone starting to get the picture? We're sharing valuable information, but we're throwing it in a landfill where nobody can come back and find it! I'm not going to sugar coat it. As an automotive enthusiast, using FB in this way is downright selfish and short-sighted. not to mention, extremely inefficient.

One could argue that, 'Well, I'll just post my information again the next time somebody needs it'. The last I checked, none of us are getting any younger any time soon. Are you telling me we all have so much free time in life that we're ok with going to dozens and dozens of FB locations to post valuable information? It sure sounds like we're living out our personal versions of a Pontiac Groundhog Day to me.

Since the invention of papyrus, in order to preserve history, man has spent millions of hours trying to properly store and organize information. FB comes along and in a couple of years that activity seems to have been pretty much been abandoned when it comes to preserving our Pontiac information!

Ok, so by now, I've either lost you completely and you are not reading this sentence or if you are still reading, maybe you are starting to get my drift. But what's the big deal? The big deal is that anything worth saving and preserving, demands gathering, organizing, and storing.

So what can we do? It's quite simple, the internet gave us an amazing way to share, organize and store information and ideas. As the internet evolved, forum communities with more and more sophisticated software emerged and flourished. In these communities, whether we noticed or not, a literal encyclopedia of knowledge was being gathered, organized, categorized and stored for all time. Interactions between consumer and manufacturer helped many new products to get developed. Most of this would never have happened if it weren't for these communities. We were BUILDING something really good. But if you really look closely at the current internet landscape, a huge majority of our communities have unknowingly been caught in the “FB trap”.

I'm not saying for all of us to abandon FB, but I never saw a successful Encyclopedia set that didn't have the current year's update. Our hobby grew because everyone came together. There is power in numbers. Having all that great knowledge get lost in a sea of endless instant gratification threads on endless FB sites is a tragedy.

It is time for all of us to collectively be more responsible and return to the places that helped make our hobby what it is today and to insure that all of it will be there in the future. Support your online Forum community!

The PY Online Forums- Bringing the Pontiac world together since 1991.

The PY Forums spans all the way back to 1991. Data has been categorized and organized since 1998. Literally millions of posts have been preserved forever. It may not be as fun as FB to use, but the entire community is fairly well organized by category and when it is not, the software has very powerful search options that can yield 20 years worth of very valuable information. And it's also pretty much all the same people you are seeing on FB anyway.

Also, within a year, expect a major announcement of a merging of the PY Forums with another very valuable Pontiac site to combine resources to be bigger and better than ever.

Come back, give back and make the Pontiac hobby better.

Chris