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Tuesday, February 14, 2012

"Sharing" decades before facebook


One of the advantages of social media technology such as facebook is that it enables users share something of interest with like minded people. Sharing has become easy and a common feature when one reads or find some visual materials of interest. Back in the 1970s & 80s in Ethiopia where such convenience did not exist, I and some of my bouqinist (booklover) friends used to share quotes, words of wisdom and excerpts from favorite books by copying from one another notebooks. Later, I along with a friend started 'sharing' by sending to editors of weekly columns in Ethiopian Herald & Addis Zemen. If I remember correctly the columns are: 'ADMAS' that appeared on Sunday in Addis Zemen whose column editor was Tadesse Muluneh (I may be wrong here) and 'Just a Few Points' a Saturday column on Ethiopian Herald edited by Arefayne Hagos. To our pleasure, some of the things we sent to these columns were published. I remember clipping those published items and keeping them for long time. Due to moving from one place to another, from country to country, from continent to continent in the last four decades, I lost some of my treasured collections. Surprisingly, I was able to find some of my old notebooks after such long time where handwritten words of wisdom, favorable quotes and excerpts from books read were scribed. When I kept them at the time, it was meant to be shared with few friends that were around me. I never have dreamt of such opportunity would arise and I would be able to "share" them to large number of people scattered around the world. If they have survived to this age of "sharing" Voici! here are some of them and Vive le Social Media!