43\u00a0 bar steady\u00a0 29.47 11mph\u00a0 NNE\u00a0 dewpoint 42 Beltane<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Crescent Moon of Growing<\/p>\n
Well, ok then.\u00a0 The reader who wondered about my hydroponics is not a Fed.\u00a0 LOL they said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is a weirdness about the Web that we can connect directly with people, yet know nothing about them.\u00a0 The weirdness compounds when we realize the people with whom we come in contact in this way, we don’t know at all beyond a few words on a computer screen.\u00a0 In the case of comments on a website or a blog like this one the stakes are, for the most part, low, but when you consider the apparent number of people who meet up in person after such interactions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
All this reminds me of Alvin Toffler and his book, Future Shock.\u00a0 I still remember many ideas from that book because he was a good phrase maker.\u00a0 High tech, high touch is the one that comes to mind here, but in a slightly different vein than Toffler’s.\u00a0 His version was that the more we connect through technology, the more we will want to see each other in person.\u00a0 I believe that’s true, but I’m on another tack here.\u00a0 High tech, high touch heightens the need, the desire for personal interaction, yes.\u00a0It produces that desire–the original sense of eros in the Greek, the desire for human contact–in a situation we have not evolved to understand.<\/p>\n
We are\u00a0animals wired over hundreds of thousands of years to read the language in another person’s eyes, the way they hold their hands, the set of their neck, the wrinkles and twitches of the mouth.\u00a0 Though we are often wrong even with those cues, at least in face-to-face encounters we have a chance to assess, to ponder.\u00a0 Words on a page are not the same.\u00a0 Not even close.\u00a0 It may be that we have a sophisticated reader’s intution about how language reveals the author, but that’s a game often got wrong by critics, so how good can we be?<\/p>\n
The point is this, words without flesh, disembodied words put us at a disadvantage.\u00a0 We can’t judge the intent of a phrase, the reason behind a conjecture.\u00a0 This has led to the all too familiar problem of flaming where some unhappy soul takes this anonymity and uses it to vent, often just to vent.<\/p>\n
Toffler also described Over Choice, a situation where we face more decisions about more matters than we can handle with anything approaching wisdom.\u00a0 This applies to people we meet through the electronic ether, too.\u00a0 The reader interested in hydroponics might be a valuable interlocutor, one whose journey with indoor gardening might supplement and enhance my own.\u00a0 And vice versa.\u00a0 Or, they could be, as I speculated, a law enforcement officer hiding behind the web’s anonymity.\u00a0\u00a0 Because it is my nature to trust first and question later, I accept the response to my speculation at face value; but, I have no face.\u00a0 Therein lies the dilemma.<\/p>\n
We must evolve some method, some means of reading people we meet on the web.\u00a0 I suppose that’s what Facebook, Youtube, Myspace propose to accomplish, but there it is often meeting people to be meeting people.\u00a0 And those social networking sites get gamed, too.\u00a0 An endless loop.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Enough on this.\u00a0 I have to get to work writing my piece for the Muse.\u00a0 It’s taken an odd turn.\u00a0 Wonder how it will finish?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
43\u00a0 bar steady\u00a0 29.47 11mph\u00a0 NNE\u00a0 dewpoint 42 Beltane \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Crescent Moon of Growing Well, ok then.\u00a0 The reader who wondered about my hydroponics is not a Fed.\u00a0 LOL they said.\u00a0 It is a weirdness about the Web that we can connect directly with people, yet know nothing about them.\u00a0 The weirdness compounds when … Continue reading A Fed? LOL<\/span>