A Rant: Luddites at the Gates (or Google Minus?)

So there is this thing called Google+.  Has been around for a while. I never really was interested because I seemed to be able to send and receive e-mails just fine without it.  Someone suggested I join Google+ to help them triage the onslaught of headers in their inbox, which if one thinks about is also good for me, because I don't know how anyone can actually find my e-mails in such digital overload.

Anyhoo. Yesterday I joined Google+, expecting something that would change my life like the first sight of a TI30 at the age of around 15. For people not born in the 60s: The TI-30 was the first pocket calculator available in Germany for less than the price of a used Beetle and before I saw the kids of more affluent parents arrive in school with them, it had never occurred to me that a thing like a pocket calculator could even exist! Please also note that I am typing this blog on a scarily evolved but directly related cousin of those ugly TI-30s. I was somewhere between 14 and 16 years old. I am pretty sure such levels of digital naivety were normal in those days, and while this was last century, we're only talking barely more than 30 years here.
Ooops. Got sidetracked again ,but now you can see what kind of revelation and new levels of personal omnipotence I was expecting.

Again, not to confuse the reader: The Luddite in the title refers to yours truly, who has no problem with technology but actually questions its raison d'etre in a case by case fashion. I am a Facebook and Twitter virgin (No Twit here ;-). Even as a child my brain never used the crutch of imaginary friends (I think it was the lack of real friends that simply made me incapable of such imagination!), and I did not see a point in acquiring those kinds of friends now.

In the time between making up my mind of pressing the [Join Google +] button and the actual event, my mind was predominantly preoccupied by which picture to choose and I didn't spend any time thinking what I might find behind that buttoned wall to +Land.

Well, the picture has been chosen, and while I managed to avoid the common categories of "Look: I am harmless", "Look, I am pretty", "Look, I am mysterious" (easy, I am none of those ;-), further thinking about the matter made me realize that I fell into the "Look, I am Ernest Hemingway" or "Look, I am the author of my first book" drawer trap.

So. I pressed the button.  I chose the picture.  The gates to the unknown +Land opened. And what did I find?  I have to be a tad careful here, because I am saying something like "This thing, which I know next to nothing about, IS VERY SIMILAR to this other thing, which I have never seen".

And even though I'm running a risk of, even if  not being de-friended,  but definitely de-circled:

Is Google+ more than just a Facebook for the technologically savvy?