"Real Life"
Sep. 13th, 2010 02:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumWho here has never heard the trope that "the internet isn't real life,"?
Anyone?
I didn't think so.
I've been thinking about that, as I (more slowly than I expected) come back to being at home mentally. Darwin was a prodigious letter writer, but once The Beagle was back in England, he never really travelled again. Mind you, he didn't set himself up in Down as a hermit, but he never again really went out to, "See the world".
And no one says, "if only he'd gone out and done something instead of staying at home and writing all those letters.
I have a huge correspondence. Some of it is on paper. These days, however, it mostly electronic. There are, from the historians' point of view, perhaps some problems with that. If the internet goes away, so does all of my, and pretty much everyone else's, recorded traces on the world.
That would suck, but such is the fate of pretty much everything. The tally-sticks of English record-keeping from the time of the Normans... you can see them in at Parliament, sort of. Because they burned, and the present building is what went up in their stead. Mind you, if the building hadn't gone up, one still couldn't see them. The fire started because they were seen as worthless, and were being burned to heat the building.
Their are other types of destruction too. Time steal all. Linear A, is inscrutable. Ogham was only recently figured out, but the number of texts in it is trivially small. The people who lived when, and where it was used, didn't live on in it.
But in the present, the net is real. The relationships it creates is real.
I did a trip this summer, almost 8,000 miles. Without the internet, it never would have happened.
I went to visit someone in Canada. I met her on the Internet. I left from my home in Calif. I met my housemate/landlord because of of the internet (it's convolute, but I went to a party, because of an internet-based friendship. At that party I met someone else, and we stayed in touch because of the internet. By virtue of that I came to know my housemate. Internets all the way down).
On the trip, I stayed with friends... whom I met through the internet. I went to dinner with other people, whom I met through the internet. I had breakfast with famous author. I had a letter of introduction, by means of e-mail.
I have offers, even pleas, to come and visit people in Europe, Australia, New Zealand... because of the internet.
That's real life. One of the people who offered to let me use the guest room while I was heading around the country (and to Canada) comes to the bay, a couple of times a year. When I was living in LA I was always frustrated that I couldn't make those visits. When one of those visits coincided with a different, "internet-friend" coming to the states it was even more frustrating (that she came again, just after I left on my road trip... another moment of the Laughing Fates).
Communication is real. Letters are real. In 20ish years of being online, I've met, or kept contact, with a lot of people. People whom I might otherwise not have done. In the old days (call it 30 years ago), to move away from a place was to lose touch with most of the people one knew. Such is no longer the case.
I know it's not new, but like any number of silly ideas, it doesn't die, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
/ranty soapboxing.
Anyone?
I didn't think so.
I've been thinking about that, as I (more slowly than I expected) come back to being at home mentally. Darwin was a prodigious letter writer, but once The Beagle was back in England, he never really travelled again. Mind you, he didn't set himself up in Down as a hermit, but he never again really went out to, "See the world".
And no one says, "if only he'd gone out and done something instead of staying at home and writing all those letters.
I have a huge correspondence. Some of it is on paper. These days, however, it mostly electronic. There are, from the historians' point of view, perhaps some problems with that. If the internet goes away, so does all of my, and pretty much everyone else's, recorded traces on the world.
That would suck, but such is the fate of pretty much everything. The tally-sticks of English record-keeping from the time of the Normans... you can see them in at Parliament, sort of. Because they burned, and the present building is what went up in their stead. Mind you, if the building hadn't gone up, one still couldn't see them. The fire started because they were seen as worthless, and were being burned to heat the building.
Their are other types of destruction too. Time steal all. Linear A, is inscrutable. Ogham was only recently figured out, but the number of texts in it is trivially small. The people who lived when, and where it was used, didn't live on in it.
But in the present, the net is real. The relationships it creates is real.
I did a trip this summer, almost 8,000 miles. Without the internet, it never would have happened.
I went to visit someone in Canada. I met her on the Internet. I left from my home in Calif. I met my housemate/landlord because of of the internet (it's convolute, but I went to a party, because of an internet-based friendship. At that party I met someone else, and we stayed in touch because of the internet. By virtue of that I came to know my housemate. Internets all the way down).
On the trip, I stayed with friends... whom I met through the internet. I went to dinner with other people, whom I met through the internet. I had breakfast with famous author. I had a letter of introduction, by means of e-mail.
I have offers, even pleas, to come and visit people in Europe, Australia, New Zealand... because of the internet.
That's real life. One of the people who offered to let me use the guest room while I was heading around the country (and to Canada) comes to the bay, a couple of times a year. When I was living in LA I was always frustrated that I couldn't make those visits. When one of those visits coincided with a different, "internet-friend" coming to the states it was even more frustrating (that she came again, just after I left on my road trip... another moment of the Laughing Fates).
Communication is real. Letters are real. In 20ish years of being online, I've met, or kept contact, with a lot of people. People whom I might otherwise not have done. In the old days (call it 30 years ago), to move away from a place was to lose touch with most of the people one knew. Such is no longer the case.
I know it's not new, but like any number of silly ideas, it doesn't die, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
/ranty soapboxing.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-14 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-15 04:36 am (UTC)Plus ça même change...