and it got me thinking.
how do I connect? where do I find community?
when do I 'feel' the most connected to others?
for me, as much as I enjoy blogging and facebooking and twittering - there's no replacement for the physical.
wrestling with my son, rocking my new daughter, and holding my wife's hand will have no equal online - not to mention the inflection of a voice; the slight gesture of body language; and the smell (albeit a recently utilized diaper)
it never ceases to confound me how someone can share embarassingly intimate details about themself with any and every one online (or who happens to be their facebook friend) and yet when approached face to face will entirely avoid and/or deny the very existence of the admission.
I understand it to a degree, as there is sense of liberation when you share something and get it off your chest - but just so you know, it's still real and it's still out there.
most likely, you came upon this post via facebook or some such online thingy (a technical ethernet term) and I welcome your thoughts because you are already in 'the know'.
- where do you find community? where do you belong?
- what role does online community play in your life?
- are we, as younger generations more or less lonely than the ones previous? or the same?
- what effect will this hyper-connectivity have on our relationships in years to come?
enough questions, my Blackberry (that I wished was an iPhone) is filling up with text messages, bbm's, facebook notifications, emails, and other reminders that I live a lonely (although well-connected life)
3 comments:
I'm getting an iphone :-) You should to.
I love personal interaction better.
some quotes from the book:
"Facebook, we could say, is a well where thirsty people come to take a drink. We are thirsty for the kind of community where we can feel at home and like ourselves. It is a place where we experience enough of an emotional buzz to keep us coming back, even though we grow increasingly thirsty with every visit. And so habituated are we to our water-gathering routine (being always-on), that it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine any other way; isn't this the best we can do?"
"The great challenge in being always-on, of course, is that it rarely enables us to be consciously intentional. More often than not, it thwarts on-purpose living by creating in us a need to respond to what is most urgent rather than what is most valuable. In other words, our hyperconnectivity can lead to hyperreactivity."
...and what about the youngsters growing up today who spend endless hours indoors in order to 'connect' with friends who also are indoors, in their rooms, in their make-believe world while the real world, outside, passes by, empty of the sound of children playing games together.
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