> Humorous, reflective, and full of interesting observations. I think it
> will be interesting for you to interact with the audience at INET and the
> other panelists... and perhaps we can work in an online component, as well.
> Maybe one of your friends or business associates could be online, chatting
> with us? Anyway, that is too complicated for now.
Complicated?-)
Do we have "the difference" here again? I mean, the on-line part was the
first thing I was thinking of. The first note I made in order to work this
was http://an.org/images/july1.jpg where I'd try to picture how the whole
thing would start from the net. Looks funny now :)
And probably the reason I spend so much more time with these discussions
compared to the effort in the writing the paper itself is that I'm more
comfortable and familiar with this interaction of ours. Your reactions,
guetions, comments and points of view carry mine and the content forms in
the communication - normally there would be no content otherwise.
Of course the whole conference is about communication and confronting
different people and issues but the time scale is totally different - I'm
not used to start preparing what I say seven months (from october to july)
before it happens. That's the complicated part for me.
> I wonder if you are so open and able to reflect on your experiences in part
> because of spending a good part of your adolescence on IRC? (I suppose IRC
> could just be Hey did you hear Bjork's new album? yes, isn't it cool?)
> What do you think? Has IRC changed the nature of your social
> relationships/abilities?
On IRC you are only what you reflect of yourself.
Only the efforts you choose (again: often unconsciously) to do to express
yourself. If you don't do anything, you don't exist.
Furthermore there's very little "overhead". I mean, on IRC very little
time has to be used to get in to places to meet friends compared with the
IRL ("in real life"). At least in northern Finland that's a major aspect
but sometimes I feel that places like Amsterdam - the cosmopolitan capital
of this country with world top population density - would need the net
even more.
Yet I'd say that, just like with mobile phones, the best use for
irc/internet is to meet people in real and not to loose them afterwards.
One thing I wrote last autumn, called How to get in touch?,
http://an.org/tunnustelua/0054.html tries to describe how easy it is to
keep in touch on IRC. Sounds nice, almost like real, doesn't it?-)
Once I lost a person (he obviously doesn't use the net) and it was
troubling me, you might find the discussion I had at the police station
amusing: http://an.org/tunnustelua/0047.html
I don't have the time and energy to draw this line know but I also think
that this might really change even the deepest basis of social being,
perhaps the concepts of the very fundamental social innovations like
marriage. Marriage. Marriage? (did you see "Life less ordinary", btw?)
+ an + ~ Toni ~ : (t . !
