The digital world as viewed through the eyes of software developers, programmers and architects has always seemed too abstract, remote and unreal to me, as compared with ‘real world’ interactions we all experience as humans on Planet Earth.

That’s why when I read this article on personal publishing, the analogy that struck me was very different from the author’s.

I look on the 3 categories - blogging, social networks and micro-blogging - from a different viewpoint… one that’s more easily ‘relatable to’ from my offline existence.

Blogging is the publishing equivalent of your main ‘job’ or ‘work’. As a heart surgeon, for me it would be performing an operation. It is intense, skilled, pain-staking work, done primarily by an individual or small team, and directed towards a particular end (in my case, fixing a child’s heart).

Social Networking is the personal publishing equivalent of ‘meetings’. Some are small, like a weekly audit of our unit’s work where fellow consultants and resident trainees discuss problems and solutions. Others are large, like annual industry conferences or tradeshows where hundreds, or even thousands of people meet and network. The focus is on learning, supporting and improving performance.

Micro-blogging, as I already once wrote, is the e-publishing equivalent of coffee-room conversation. A stress reliever, a quick connector, a ‘What’s New’ updater, or just a place to meet someone and say ‘Hi, there’… before getting back to the other bits of one’s professional life.

And that’s why I disagree partly with the conclusion that:

“Each form of personal publishing is different and each has its niche and audience.”

None of these are mutually exclusive. Not many people spend all day in the coffee-room. And all but the most workaholic surgeons find time to relax outside the O.R.

Each form of online socializing - and that’s all these different vehicles are - has a role to play in every Web user’s life… at different stages of growth, at varying times and phases.

But can they be inter-changed?

That’s the interesting question. I’ve seen people offended by being told dogmatically that

“Twitter should be used for…”

and asking

“Sez who?!”

Exactly.

Sometimes, the critical break needed to solve a complex diagnostic problem comes not from intense debate in a conference hall or deep thought and brainstorming in an operation theater or office/clinic - but in casual conversation in the coffee-room or around the water cooler!

And inane chatter is often a feature of a stress-loaded O.R. during periods of relatively less critical work. Ditto for meeting rooms.

So stepping back and looking at the panaroma of digital publishing solutions online, it is apparent that (regardless of the excited, enthusiastic developers’ claim of ‘discovery’) what we see on the Web is just another manifestation of systems we as a human race have evolved over eons of existence - to work, network and relax.

No matter how digitized and ‘virtual’ our world may apparently seem, at its core we are still human.

And I love that!

How about you?