‹ Messages Affronted By Conversations … •
The bottom line is this: they reached at random out into the Datacloud and found a real friend. And I feel like I have been graced with a real friend in both of them. Given the fact that I’ve been getting interesting messages from distant strangers since 1985, why do I think the big deal? Why is this different? Because these strangers have voices. There’s a lot more emotional bandwidth in the human voice. I’m always surprised by the Meatspace version of someone I’ve only encountered in ASCII. I’m rarely surprised by someone I’ve only met on the phone. But one doesn’t get random phone calls from Viet Nam or China, or at least one never could before.Skype changes all that. Now anybody can talk to anybody, anywhere. At zero cost. This changes everything. When we can talk, really talk, to one another, we can connect at the heart.
The potential of establishing a real emotional connection is exponentially advantaged. And I honestly don’t think it would have been any different had they been guys. In the days since, I’ve received another random call from a guy in Australia. We talked, very entertainingly, for awhile. I’m glad to know him too. (He wasn’t trying to practice his English. He actually seems to prefer his version. He was just doing it because he could.)
And then there is the mysterious imprimatur of coincidence. This had never happened to me before and then it happened twice in a single night with two Asian girls who are within days of being the same age as my eldest daughter. (In fact, Dung Vu is three days younger than Leah.) Somehow this seems too weird not to have been meaningful. (Though this belief could be another symptom of my well-established apophenia.)
Anyway, I feel as if the Global Village became real to me that night, and, indeed, it has become the Global Dinner Party. All at once. The small world has become the intimate world.
I’m beginning to think this Internet thing may turn out to be emotionally important after all.
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January 29, 2005 at 8:49 am
Anonymous
Dave (unregistered curmudgeonly commenter) Rogers here again.
You know, it was all I could do to keep going after the first couple of paragraphs of Barlow’s piece.
“the functional elimination of distance became invisible to us almost as soon as it happened.”
Maybe to Barlow, who can afford to jet halfway cross the planet as the whim overtakes him, but I doubt it’s really invisible to any of the rest of us who can afford neither the airfare nor the time off from work to do so. I won’t say Barlow is out of touch, but he’s in touch with a different reality than the one I inhabit.
No, these are not “real” connections, since I get to decide. They’re partial connections. They’re useful, they’re valuable in some way, but they are most assuredly not “real.”
“Real,” like “reality,” is messy, demanding, inconvenient, unfair, and, most assuredly, NOT a dinner party.
As it should be.
This is a guy who is seeing only what he wants to see, and editing out everything else. Sounds nice.
“Now anybody can talk to anybody, anywhere. At zero cost. This changes everything. When we can talk, really talk, to one another, we can connect at the heart.”
It’s difficult for me to articulate how violently I am repelled by these assertions, and how troubling it is to me that you unquestioningly endorse them as “wonderful.” Seduction? Willful delusion? I don’t know, you decide. But before you do, consider this:
1. Anybody can, most assuredly, NOT talk to anybody, anywhere. False. A dream. A fantasy. An attractive one, but utter bullshit.
2. There is no such thing as “at zero cost.” Everything has a cost. There’s the cost of equipment, the cost of bandwidth, the cost of time. And there’s the opportunity cost, which is probably the greatest of all. More feel-good bullshit.
3. This changes everything. If I had a nickel for every time someone has typed those words, I could be jetting around the world like Barlow. Bullshit. If you want to go into how many ways this is completely and utterly false, I’m happy to do it. But it should be a trivial exercise for the interested student.
4. “We can talk, really talk…” Talk is cheap. Love is faith in action. Talk is not action. Action is action.
No, no, no, a thousand times, NO!
Excuse me, I think I’m going to go vomit.
January 29, 2005 at 9:57 am
Anonymous
1. You’re absolutely right.
2. Again, you’re correct. Opportunity cost is in the eye of the costing accountant, or … is as opportunity does.
3. Again, I think you’re right. And I do think that the interconnectedness of the Internet changes some things … obviously, various people are thinking, writing, arguing and wondering about what and why.
4. I personally don’t think all talk is cheap, and for my money, useful talk precedes necessary action. Action at all cost, and before everything elese, has gotten us into a world of hurt so far … and no not me personally. I have a roof over my head and eat three squares, and live on dry land that will likelystay dry for another 50 years, etc. …. but I would much prefer the world to be arranged quite differently than it is today, and that troubles me a lot.
2.
January 29, 2005 at 9:58 am
Anonymous
Hope you didn’t get any on your shoes .