[ Home | Contents | Archive | Post | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]
From:
Date: 24 Feb 2004
Time: 02:51:08 -0600
Remote Name: 216.192.10.11
Interesting Q. Perhaps it is the mediums ability to skip all the basic "getting to know you" stuff and jump right into sharing at a level of intimacy that we rarely do so fast face-to-face, if ever. It is kinda backwords. When you devel into all the really interesting stuff inside online, how do you go back and start at "Hallo. Nice to meet you. Nice weather we are having." My guess is that there is this gap created by the BBs ability to span time and space and open doors into subjects we might never get a chance to explore with physical friends. Opening windows into our souls creates new types of relationship that defy not only cultural conventions but a millennia of social mores that help us negotiate our way safely and slowly through the quicksand of connecting. Think about it. We skip all the history and baggage introductions and jump into the heart of discussions you might, if you were lucky, have experienced a couple of times in college late at night hanging out at the coffee house. Moments between studying for midterms when the whole world opened up and the interaction between tables leapt centuries and continents and arbitrarily chosen majors to deal with discussions that took you to the center of life or the edges of our universe of human thought. And if you were really lucky, the discussion had a rhythm that spiraled in and out, a center that held like a spinning top that kept going long after the tables emptied and the lights were turned off. Like "Mindwalk", where characters find themselves transformed at crossroads not marked on any ordinary human map. How do you casually say "hi" after that and not lose the magic? [Of course, if you are using the Internet to share recipes for salad dressing, the above might not apply. LOL]