Always Crashing In The Same Car
I've not been very well lately. Physically, even moreso than mentally, for a change. Spent the past day in bed, sipping warm milk and brandy (no lemsip in the house) and finishing all 700 pages of Vanity Fair. I've grown to love Thackeray, as the bitchy, negative, pesimisstic Shadow of Austen, where every ending is not happy.
But all that warm milk gave me bad dreams, again. I've been having the run of stress dreams lately - last week I dreamed the Emma knocked out all my teeth by accident. Last night in my sleep, I had illicit sex with a friend with whom sex would be highly inappropriate, and then found myself driving a car, of which the brakes had been cut, careening through my old neighbourhood in Upstate NY. I managed to get through the devilish intersetion of the 87 and 90 (which sent many houseguests spiralling off down towards NYC by mistake) then found myself circling a parking lot, unable to stop, looking for my mother's car (which had gone).
I spent much of yesterday writing in my diary, an activity which brings me much peace of mind lately, since it is the only place where I can be completely free and honest and unguarded. I was thinking a great deal about the article in The Guardian this past weekend, about Web 2.0 (what a silly name - as if we're not on Web 4 or 5 by this point, since its humble beginnings). Quite typically, an older man grumbling about "not quite getting it".
Flickr: I mean, what on earth is the point of that? He ruminated. Why would anyone want to share their private snaps with the world, and why indeed, would anyone want to look at pictures of strangers? Why indeed? Why put photos in your newspaper at all, Mr. Guardian? Not even mentioning the strong point of Web 2.0 which is the social networking aspect, which allows you to filter for your friends' snapshots!
And yet, this august personnage, who does not like blogs or MySpace because they "feel intrusive" (despite being made for show) has no compunction whatsoever about eavedropping on the private (presumably emailed or instant messaged) online conversations of people sitting next to him in a web care.
And he concludes, with the infinite wisdom of people who have never experienced the bustle of internet social life, that people who communicate through the web are somehow more "alone" for this experience. So does this also invalidate phone conversations? Are those interactions less "real" for the technology involved? And think about these online communication he derrides of the lonely people of the web - what would their alternative be, "In Real Life"? The IRL situations of Prostitution and Meat Market Pick-Up Bars are just as sad and tawdry then internet relationships.
For me, as explained below, the internet is a supplement to my IRL experiences and relationships. But there have indeed been times, when, trapped in isolation, it was my lifeline. Yes, that's sad. But people like the author have this rosey eyed view that somehow the alternative is this rich and wholesome life awaiting them off the web. And what if you aren't blessed with that? In such times as I've been there, thanks, I'd still rather have the internet than nothing at all.
And eventually, he concludes that the cleverest thing about MySpace is its name, that it's nothing but Me, Me, Me. And this misses the point most clearly of all - Web 2.0 isn't about Me, Me, Me - it's about Me and Me and Me becoming Us.
But all that warm milk gave me bad dreams, again. I've been having the run of stress dreams lately - last week I dreamed the Emma knocked out all my teeth by accident. Last night in my sleep, I had illicit sex with a friend with whom sex would be highly inappropriate, and then found myself driving a car, of which the brakes had been cut, careening through my old neighbourhood in Upstate NY. I managed to get through the devilish intersetion of the 87 and 90 (which sent many houseguests spiralling off down towards NYC by mistake) then found myself circling a parking lot, unable to stop, looking for my mother's car (which had gone).
I spent much of yesterday writing in my diary, an activity which brings me much peace of mind lately, since it is the only place where I can be completely free and honest and unguarded. I was thinking a great deal about the article in The Guardian this past weekend, about Web 2.0 (what a silly name - as if we're not on Web 4 or 5 by this point, since its humble beginnings). Quite typically, an older man grumbling about "not quite getting it".
Flickr: I mean, what on earth is the point of that? He ruminated. Why would anyone want to share their private snaps with the world, and why indeed, would anyone want to look at pictures of strangers? Why indeed? Why put photos in your newspaper at all, Mr. Guardian? Not even mentioning the strong point of Web 2.0 which is the social networking aspect, which allows you to filter for your friends' snapshots!
And yet, this august personnage, who does not like blogs or MySpace because they "feel intrusive" (despite being made for show) has no compunction whatsoever about eavedropping on the private (presumably emailed or instant messaged) online conversations of people sitting next to him in a web care.
And he concludes, with the infinite wisdom of people who have never experienced the bustle of internet social life, that people who communicate through the web are somehow more "alone" for this experience. So does this also invalidate phone conversations? Are those interactions less "real" for the technology involved? And think about these online communication he derrides of the lonely people of the web - what would their alternative be, "In Real Life"? The IRL situations of Prostitution and Meat Market Pick-Up Bars are just as sad and tawdry then internet relationships.
For me, as explained below, the internet is a supplement to my IRL experiences and relationships. But there have indeed been times, when, trapped in isolation, it was my lifeline. Yes, that's sad. But people like the author have this rosey eyed view that somehow the alternative is this rich and wholesome life awaiting them off the web. And what if you aren't blessed with that? In such times as I've been there, thanks, I'd still rather have the internet than nothing at all.
And eventually, he concludes that the cleverest thing about MySpace is its name, that it's nothing but Me, Me, Me. And this misses the point most clearly of all - Web 2.0 isn't about Me, Me, Me - it's about Me and Me and Me becoming Us.
posted by Masonic Boom | 1:42 pm
1 Comments:
Print media in general resents the internet, because it's losing all its advertising business to it and its issue sales are dropping.
Most good papers, like the Guardian (too many commas and pinkos, but what the hell, it's good) have really improved their online presence and by so doing probably vastly increased their readership, but advertisers are slow to respond to this increase as they should. So newspapers don't like the internet.
Neither do cranky farts who probably grew up in an era when ladies did all their typing for them.
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