Tweets, Twits

For better or worse, Twitter is moving the picket fences of good taste as the formerly private becomes increasingly public.

There are dads tweeting (sending Twitter posts) from the delivery room. There is a father who decided that the way to honor his soldier son was to try and get a bunch of strangers to let their thumbs do his bragging and move "aaron" ("They killed my son," he originally posted) up the tweetscale. And then there's the celeb son who twittered his love for dead dad Billy Mays, as well as the original announcement of his passing.

From a currently favored POV: Twits, indeed.

Facing Choices with Wisdom

Obviously, take care of dad should be the numero uno guiding principle for children and decisions should be easy. Life, unfortunately, just doesn't work out that way.

Not everyone may get the chance, like Peru congresswoman Keiko Fukimoro, to pardon pop — controversial former dictatorial prez Alberto Fujimoro — and save him from prison time. That is, you don't always get to be a hero.

Usually taking care of dad these works out to be something a bit more difficult to manage, like defriending him on Facebook — because he doesn't understand when you say you're engaged there but really are not — or you have to cease his consulting contract with your company, that is fire him (for the second time in recent years) because business has been dropping off.

What are needed is one set of guiding principles, words from a wise father that will bring comfort and wisdom in all circumstances:

Measure of Success

Wired's Geek Dad turned two, with contests and reflections celebrating the paternally and technologically obsessed. What it doesn't do, however, is answer the question of what it means for the child (in general terms) to have a dad who is mechanically minded.

Could technological interests or abilities shadow a child in the same way being a Beatle could? And in exchange, to be fair, how far can a child knock you off your mechanical game, because no matter what he thinks, Roger Federer will have quite the adjustment to his tennis game after baby Fed arrives.

Do the GDs have a tool to accurately measure that?

Tech Today

In its march onward, technology is always giving to and taking from fathers.

On the one hand, Etendi is targeting divorced dads, among others, with their web-based suite (Etendi Bridge) of communication widgets to keep in touch with kids. (Admittedly, this is sometimes easier from a distance than face-to-face.) On the other hand, there is news from British researchers that one in 25 kids doesn't belong to the dad who thinks it's his, which is supposed to be good news since some thought the number was one in 10.

Joined together, the question does arise as to whether it might be possible for the biological fathers who are responsible for the five percent of kids who don't belong to their "dads" to use some secret communications technology to communicate and support their sons and daughters, without causing them too many problems at the same time. "Engineers, start your engines ..."

Post Mortem

Things usually change after a father's death ... and not just that he isn't around anymore.

It's "usually," because we can always look to the example of Wang Hsiueh-Hong, founder/majority owner of companies that make the majority of the world's smart phones. Her father, the late Wang Yung-Ching, Taiwan's god of management, was one of the richest men in the world and spread both his wisdom and his wealth among his nine children and his native country. Although daughter Wang steps on to the stage and even as someone who made her wealth on her own, she will always be overshadowed by her father.

Which a court has decided won't quite be the case for an Arkansas child born two years after his/her father's death. The child was conceived in vitro in June 2001; the father died on the job in July 2001 and the the widow gave birth, thanks to the implanted embryos in March 2003. Among other results, the Arkansas Court of Appeals ruled the child is not a dependent. His death benefits will not apply to his child. Making the baby child and not-child to the father.

That not-child status seems the sort of vague moniker also assigned to another who achieved great celebrity (and even best seller status) without ever really stepping beyond his father's shadow. Christopher Buckley, son of founder of modern conservatism William, was cut from his father's will and is fighting to establish a relationship with a son by a mother to whom he is not married.

He has also been publicly tossed from the magazine that served as the publicity engine for his father's philosophy (although as owner of one-seventh of the publication he can't be privately thrown away quite as easily. The Buckley father-son status will surely be chewed over if not quite resolved for history when young (55?) Buckely's "Losing Mum and Pup," a 40 day or so treatise of creative mourning is published next year.