Michael Jackson is dead.

Benj, one of my blogging mentors, asked everyone in his Plurk Timeline: Is Michael Jackson the most popular/famous person to have died in our generation? Some cyber minutes have past and he, together with the ones who replied, offered other choices: John Paul II, Princess Diana Spencer, Frank Sinatra, Mother Teresa and Saddam Hussein. I haven’t replied to his Plurk but I already have a thought in mind—which I planned to be an introductory entry in my new blog.

I am supposed to answer this:

I think that new social media (NSM) greatly affects the “death popularity” of a person who died during the era wherein NSM is nearing its explosive climax. Add to the fact that MJ is already popular to begin with; add to the fact that MJ is a media personality whose appearances and persona (both tangible and virtual) are not limited to his immediate community.

Death Popularity Trends as visualized by Alps

I only knew that the Pop icon died when several people sent me lines of text messages whose themes span from being objective to implying grief. You see, even the alphabet who are supposed to be void of any meaning are suddenly capable of showing emotions—thanks to emoticons. Anyway, the news shocked me even though I am not a big fan. The news shocked even those who are not supposed to care. Why such paradox? Actually, I don’t regard this as a paradox. It is more of a principled example of the dynamics of new social media communication. All of us are suddenly living in a single commune, almost utilizing the same resources every time. All of us are suddenly working on this big cyber organization which is run by nobody. Fortunately, we don’t have job descriptions, but we have jobs every time we log-in. We adopt the flexi-time scheme. But most of the time, time does not exist.  There are only three rules governing Internet Incorporated. Unfortunately, no one knows about them.

Welcome to the new frontier of liberalism. This is The Vinculum*. A blog that talks about the dynamics of communication practices with special emphasis to organizational communication and its application to the new social media.

The Vinculum–Communication dissection at its most elegant yet sophisticated fashion.

http://vinculum.alpsaguado.com/

*”Vinculum” is a latin word for ”bond”, “fetter”, “chain”, or “tie”.