a dear friend expressed his “ambivalence” about both facebook and blogs. he is by no stretch of the imagination internet averse, and is one of the most informed people i know ~ on and offline. but i have taken issue with him.
personally, i believe, for better or worse, we are governed by an age of instant gratification and vicarious needs. the internet fulfills both aspirations. there is a profoundly adequate german verb that predates the internet: darstellungsbeduerfnis (approximately translated as: the need to project oneself) ~ which i find best captures the zeitgeist of our times.
facebook has allowed me to reconnect with many people, lost over time. one of the articulating features of my own life has been a continuous state of transition and flux. this transience has meant that from the age of eight, i have been permanently on the move across continents. schools were never more that a three year sojourn and the friends of my youth have simply evaporated.
on the charge that facebook is more an "openbook": i manage my facebook page closely, allowing only controlled interface. i share information with only a closed user group of "friends" ~ selected as such and according to my whim (my prerogative). because it is open to only that group, lewd and inappropriate behavior is largely self-regulated. which good, no? it is text messages which have today become the preferred weapon of salacious solicitation!
politically, i find it interesting that the internet, in its various avatars, facebook and blogs included, hark back to a primordial (if flawed, idealistic and largely unattainable) form of direct participatory democracy ~ what the americans so euphemistically call townhalls. this is best exemplified by what CNN calls i-reporters or i-reporting. i don't i-report, but i have entered into dialogue with various news correspondents whose views have found resonance with me. the internet has also allowed me to engage authors of books i have read. more often than not, they have responded, and this has lead to interesting conversations.
the biggest challenge in the internet space is deciding where you want to go. if tattoos and harleys are not your thing, then you don't have to go there. there is just too much stuff on the internet. it is your responsibility to decide how and where you expend your bandwidth and energy.
one of the most positive outcomes of the internet, info sharing, and immediate gratification is that it has allowed me to reconnect with friends long lost. and while i may not be able to dialogue with these friends and former lovers over a single malt and gaze into their eyes, it entirely eliminates the need to compose letters and subsidize the royal mail, the US postal services or the indian posts and telegraphs!
for those who cannot strip in a sauna, there’s always the internet.
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Your blog post resonated so much with what is in my inbox right now…
I found a great pianist (who calls himself Pianoman!!!)on youtube and wrote him a mail… quite out of character for me, becoz one never knows if there’s a legit person out there answering one’s mails.
And surprise, surprise, I got a response, answering my queries about requests for his sheet music etc… but I won’t go into the details.
Point is, yes, FB, blogs and the various internet tools have made people / strangers accessible. When one is so blown away by something one reads / listens to, and the moment is ripe for expressing one’s thoughts, there’s nothing that provides instant gratification, as you say, like the I-net.
Also, for people like me who fight shy of approaching a stranger – author / musician / actor / blog post writer (:-) ) with my views, the anonymity that the I-net gives us wall-flowers is probably it’s greatest merit. The written form gives us time to edit our thoughts, re-work drafts and polish our posts and then send them out into the labyrinths of WWW, hopeful that its gaffe-proof and misinterpretation-free and if there is any intent to be flirtatious, then too, there’s no doubt whatsoever. The flip side of anonymity is probably cowardice, but then again, that’s another perspective through the glass marble.
Keep writing.
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