Barlowfriendz Comments … Me Too

Dave (unregistered commenter) Rogers here again.

You know what’s great about these online friends Jon? They’re low-maintenance! They never ask you to help move their furniture. You never have to look after their pets! (They can just pay people for stuff like that!) And you only have to chat with them when you feel like it, because you only bump into them when you choose to!

And, you only get to see the good stuff too. So you don’t have to deal with things like how mean a guy gets to his wife when he’s had too much to drink. Or how they neglect their kids. And speaking of kids! Whoa, there’s a major advantage! Not having any of those annoying rug rats around messing up the total friendship experience!

And with all my cool online friends, I don’t have to interact with any of the weird people who live around me with all their pets, and kids, and dysfunctional marriages, and needs!

Yep, this internet stuff is the shit! It’s just like REAL LIFE, only without all the icky parts!

Sign me up, man!

Yes, I’ve read some of your other blog posts, about the people next door to you, and down the street and stuff.

Don’t know what to say, other than I have both sorts of friends … some of them I have helped move, and will still do, as well as paint their houses or fix stuff or commiserate with respect to jobs, finances, houses … and I relate to in real-time, f2f, 3D.

And others I have met via blogging, listened to and talked with, and connected them with other friends in cities elsewhere to where I live, and those people have met up, and continue to do so. And I have ended up working with people I have met via blogging.

And a fair number of good and serious conversations have been interrupted … to resume later … by wailing kids, or kids needing to be put to bed, or disrupted by elderly parents’ needs .. it’s just as much work and discipline picking up and getting back into wherever it was we left off then as it is in “real life”.

And no they’re not necessarily all lo-maintenace … what’s lo-maintenance about it is that the person at the other end can always choose to stay out of dialogue, and not for example reply to emails, or other means of communicating and building relationships.

Well, actually either party can choose to stop interacting, but I like to make it a point to work at it unless it becomes dysfunctional or stupid.

I’m sorry it doesn’t work for you, dave and you seem determined to make that point. It works for me, so far, and it hasn’t always smelled like Febreze and looked liked a pastoral idyll, either. I’ve had to work at my end of it, for sure.

Dave here again.

What’s not working for me is that I’m not making my point.

My point is, it works too well.

It’s not all about “friends,” it’s about having to inhabit a planet with a lot of people who aren’t our friends, and how we’re growing ever more adept and comfortable excluding them, and I think that has some serious ramifications nobody cares to look at very closely. All the while congratulating ourselves on all the progress technology affords us in making new friends. Which, again, I don’t totally discount. But I think we risk missing a very serious point.

The point I seem to fail to make.

I’d agree that you didn’t make that point clearly, whilst imo making other points quite strongly … which I think (tho’ I may be wrong) leads then to your felt need to say “I don’t totally discount” … after using a strongly worded image (vomiting) to indicate your judgment of a person’s exaggerated positive position.

The issue you raise of it working too well and the resulting range of effects such as exclusion, new variations of hierarchy based on profile, page rank, link cosmii or whatever, libel and slander, fundamental mand perpetual marginalisation of the poor without access to literacy, computes, and Internet access do indeed have large and serious ramifications for our society … one might almost say that these issues can contribute to the “it changes everything” rhetoric.

I’d say in some ways, clearly no … and in opther ways, laregely depending upon what is and is not done - acted upon - with respect to ways connecting together can be truly helpful to addressing our current major problems and enabling and/or supporting constructive soluitions to the sure-to-be-many future problems.

So … here’s something that’s action, and involves all the issues we’re talking about … and with which you might not agree (for political/nationalistic reasons ? - I don’t know your take on things). My Dad is 86 years old. He’s a life long socialist, having grown up in Canada in Saskatchewan at the time of a Canadian hero, Tommy Douglas (recently voted The Greatest Canadian of All Time or some such).

My father has a great admiration for the work of the fledgling Latin American drive to economic and social democracy, and has long been an admirer of the country Cuba - he says Cuba is in many ways much more democratic, in its governance, than the USA.

Wel… anyway, after the death of my Mother 7 years ago, my Dad went to Cuba and began taking Spanish lessons. Now he returns a couple of times a year, completley legally because he’s Canadian, and when he’s here at home, he collects and refurbishes old computers and printers and modems and such, and boxes them up and sends them, on his nickel, to Cuba for the children tohave more computers in the schools. My Dad detest the American Embargo of Cuba, mostly because it offends his sense of fariness … and so on.

I admire my Dad a lot. He thinks, and acts on his convictions, even at 86 … and it’s also important to note that he could not have done this nearly as effectively without the Internet … probably couldn’t have done it at all, actually.

You’ll want one of those foam ribber wrist protector bars for your forehead, i think, dave

An interesting thing I saw while reading an article on Planetwork.com: one of the authors said he no longer says “she’s a friend of mine” but instead says “she’s in the network”.

Now i think it might be an issue that one can have loyalty and other deep feelings for a Friend that one can’t have for a network Node. And this bloodless network schema may now be superimposed on one’s offline friends.

On the other hand, Nietzsche said that the thing to do was not to “Love thy neighbor” but to love what was most distant.

See, nobody knows where this is all going.

(BTW, what your dad is doing is great.)

-klaus

“in the tribe” ??? ala Mcluhanic re-tribalization in the digital era ? at the granular level, family & friends, or by area of interest/activity, then presumably scalable in terms of various social and economic strata and clusterings ?

No, about tribes, although I don’t know anything about tribes. I think the point is that the essence of a network is redundancy. Is that the essence of a tribe? A defense posture.

A friend is unique, a network node is not?

point in fact: barlow’s multiple asian sweeties. real thing or simulacra?

klaus

good question … do you know the answer ?

Dave (strongly worded imagery) Rogers here again.

I think what your father is doing is a wonderful thing. (Important safety tip: Never argue about someone’s family.)

What I was reacting most strongly to was this admiring endorsement, seemingly subscribed to or endorsed by you:

“They are the kind of people I would choose as friends had I the occasion to randomly meet them in person. The internet has allowed what travel has not, is the bottom line. I think of those who don’t get it, and feel that it’s their loss.”

Which is a way of saying, they are the kind of people he would not choose to exclude from his life if he had to live next door to them. And somehow those of us who may not feel exactly the way that he does, “don’t get it,” and that’s our “loss.” I think it’s a least possible there’s something he’s not getting that may represent a “loss” as well. Do you suppose you or he would welcome my pity?

Then you offer: “one might almost say that these issues can contribute to the “it changes everything” rhetoric.”

One could, but one would be wrong. Technology changes how people do things, it doesn’t change _what_ they do. Never has. Never will. People have always sought to control their experience of the world, and a part of that is dividing into groups, which is mostly about excluding and competing with “others.”

We’re now able to establish different groups, and because they may come from other countries and other cultures, we think they’re “better.” When it’s really just another exclusive culture in the creation, where those who don’t “get it” are presumed to be suffering a loss (are losers?). Welcome to the brave new world.

Technology does not change the world. Not in the ways that matter. The only thing that can change what human beings do is is individual human beings working on changing themselves.

I see little reason to hope for that, so perhaps you and Barlow and the commenter are all correct, and we should just settle for and celebrate rearranging the furniture.

I don’t mean to harsh anyone’s buzz here, so perhaps I should refrain from commenting in the future.

I will reply at more length … for now, please don’t refrain from commenting if you feel like commenting. Letting me and anyone else that comes by here know that you’re going off to vomit just suggests that you believe strongly in your convictions and don’t mind letting others know, in technicolour, what you think of their thinking. No biggie … if I or we can’t handle that and come back for more, then we’ll all have a problem in the future. It just seemed to reinforce the building feeling that your judgment was quite strong and that anyone that didn’t see it that (your) way was worthy of contempt, in that they were sufficiently stupid or stubborn as to move you to spew.

I’ve read much of your perspective, both here and elsewhere, and I honestly fo think I get your points and yopur perspective. There are a couple of key things in there, that i will comment on (later after I have breakfast and a coffee or three).