Qui Es Muy Macho ?

… pineapple or knife ? … goes a line from an old Laurie Anderson song.

Which is harder … communicating about the mundane aspects of daily life between two people - virtually or face-to-face ?

Groundhog Day points to an article outlining the pros and cons (cons, mainly, I guess) of an unfettered ability to connect and communicate virtually available to American soldiers stationed in many different places in the world.

I have always thought that one of Groundhog Day’s key points to be correct - that we cannot escape the implications or consequences of our incarnate actions and surroundings, and in relating and interacting virtually miss (by definition) some fundamental components and core aspects of our earthly existence (if I have interpreted and captured it correctly). Another key implication, extended from the preceding belief, is that if we want to engage in, participate in, and support significant change(s) in the way things are done in whatever family/group/community/society we live, we must concentrate first on self-knowledge, self-awareness and self-management. This too I believe is correct.

I am less convinced that the use of controls and ways of enabling or allowing virtual contact and communications to members of the military by their commanders is the best example available of some of the early learnings about how we handle interaction and communications in a wired world.

The article in the NY Times titled “For Troops, Home Can Be Too Close”, starts out describing an example of some conflict and stress associated with domestic issues between a soldier and his spouse, and then expands its reach.

The military is taking steps to control the information flow, in part with Internet kill switches at bases to give senior officers a means to enforce communication blackouts. Military researchers, meanwhile, are scrambling to track the broader impact of instant communication technology. Studies under way include the interpersonal - as in the Murrays’ painful collision of household and war zone - and urgent matters of national and military security.

“We are going to learn profound lessons from this war about how to manage these devices to communicate what we really want to convey, and reduce the negative aspects,” said Dr. Morten G. Ender, a sociologist at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

There are a couple of points here that got me thinking. First, the fundamental nature of military work (as I understand it, which is not very well) would mitigate against free accessible interconnectivity and open communications of all sorts, willy-nilly .. and so if it was first offered on such a basis, my sense is that the initial strategic thinking about providing such access and capability wasn’t superb. And, I don’t think it’s any secret that the current US Adminitration favours top-down dynamics … and the culture of any organization is set by, and takes its cues and clues from, the top.

Second, the scenario which opened the article describes a problematic situation of communication between two people of a sort that happnes thousands of times a day, virtual or not .. and I quickly found myself thinking about how many times in the past, when such communications had not been so readily available, people found that after several years apart without all that much connection, re-connecting and then sustaining the fundamental relationship proved to be overwhelmingly difficult.

As an opposing example - the story Suw Charman, who blogs as the Strange Attractor for Corante, offered when she stayed here recently. Her new boyfriend Chris has just moved from Rochester NY to San Francisco to work for SixApart, and Suw lives outside of Bournemouth in Sussex, UK … she said she and Chris happily hang out together - online - most evenings and more (I guess during the day, too) often without saying much to each other, but sensing, feling and having ongoing awareness of each other’s presence virtually (I think they may both have Macs and iSights). She feels (if I recall correctly) that this capability has allowed them to significantly deepen and ground what otherwise would be a trying way to build a long-distance relationship … with the happy intention of not keeping it virtual forever. I’m sure Suw will announce it when she moves to San Fran.

That’s all well and good. The article raises a few more issues, which I agree are symptomatic of the problems associated with relying on virtuality and interconnectivity as the main means of conducting and sustaining interpersonal and collaborative relationships. From the article:

“We’ve raised expectations of instantaneous communications to such an unreasonable level that when we can’t connect, the technology ends up being a new source of stress,” said Dr. Frederic Medway, a psychologist and a specialist in military and family separation issues at the University of South Carolina.

The technology can also distort communication. Cellphones and e-mail artificially compress time and space, giving the illusion of chatting almost in the same room. But as the Murrays’ experience shows, context greatly influences how people “hear” what’s being said. Frequency and volume, moreover, don’t necessarily contribute to better understanding. “We are seeing a great deal of information overload in soldiers in Iraq and in their families,” Dr. Ender said.

I have trained myself over the years to look for, and think in terms of polarities. I notice what I call polarities in each of the scenarios and examples reported in this article. And I think that this is representative of the fact that we haven’t yet learned enough about how to use such capability to maximum or optimal ends in various situations … can it be imagined that the wisest use of such interconnectivity and instant access to others will come to be *managed* by oneself and others throughthe use of various forms of *governors*, or self-management rules as to when and how it’s used (for example). We do this in real-life, in meatspace … whether it’s counting to 10, or going for a walk, or sulking, or getting drunk and blowing off steam.

When I write, or try to wax eloquent, about the positive, constructive or utopian aspects of interconnectivity, interaction, blogging, *wirearchy* .. whatever … it is mainly motivated by all the idiocy, lack of responsibility and abuse of positions of power I have seen and experienced, and contributed to, in my life to date. There are relatively simplistic (imo) rules and associated practices related to fundamental hierarchical principles operating in most organizations and social sytems, and I believe that they have not accounted fully (yet) for the presence and imnpacts of interconnectivity and the ease of sharing different kinds of information … and yes, I am encouraged by the possibilites for self-development and constructuive collaboration offered by the at-the-same-level dynamics (perhaps) made possible by the Web and interconnected people.

This does not mean I think all this will solve many, or even any, of my problems, or my friends’ and group’s problems, or my city’s or country’s problems, or the world’s problems.

But I do think it’s a damned useful and hopeful set of tools and capabilities to play with, learn with, work with and discover how to use better.