vicariously



Last night, as the insomnia had me in its grip and my body refused to succumb to any kind of healthy rest, I was blog-hopping. I visited my favorites and started to jump to their favorites, etc etc. It's a tangled web out there, folks. I found a couple of new pages that are totally worthy of the stalking list, and some people out there who just scare me.

**Note on this: being an "artist" is not necessarily code for "send me naked pictures because to me it isn't porn, it's art". You can keep your nekkidness to your own damn selves. I've seen what people send and it gave me nightmares.**

All of that blog-hopping got me thinking that we have, more than ever, as a global society, turned into evesdroppers of the highest order. We check in with the rest of the web-accessible planet to see that our crappiness is not lone crappiness.."Look! he/she/they have crappiness too!" Occassionally, there is also the shared joy of babies born, jobs gotten, life advances made. I'm wondering how all of this is going to affect society in the next generation. The previous generation saw the ease of intercontinental travel, and almost simultaneously, this virtual travel has been developed. I wonder if it will inspire the future web interlopers to travel to these places they have been exposed to or if they will simply stay locked into their wireless hovels and gawk, negating the need for healthy social interaction. The optimist in me wants to believe that it will have a positive role, and bring us all closer together, but the cynic in me fears the worst. Upcoming generations of socially maladjusted people, only able to expose themselves in the oddest of web-cam ways. Are we destined to become lonely because of all of this communication??

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

When we look at how a past technology has changed life today, we can make a connection using hindsight. Of course, it's always a lot harder to predict what today's technology will do to tomorrow. We think about our linear progression and try to project it, but the future is an expanding space that darts off in random directions. In order to see what our present is building for the future, we need to avoid projecting in a linear fashion, but instead, find the right questions to ask about how our children will deal with the things we pioneer. Those questions only become obvious in the future when we're already in possession of the answers.

Jeff Cutler said...

Lonely because of all the communication? Doubtful.
I'm of the belief that the sprayed thoughts, dreams, recaps, stories and other blather from all the mouths on the 'Net will only build the need for responses.
I write because I want people to read what I write.
Sure, having written is a great feeling, but I write for myself about 51% and I write for others about 48%. During the last 1% I think of ways to be odd.
Ignore Sitboaf's complicated and all-too-deep analysis. He's much more fun in person.

By the way, did you like anything you saw on my blog?

elizabeth said...

yes, jeff, i enjoy your odd blog. I have to say, my favorite i've read so far was the first thing i read, which was the bowl of cheese entry. i'm fascinated that one could actually eat a bowl of cheese. don't get me wrong, i love some cheese, but my god, man.