A little over ten years ago, my autonomous being began to dissolve. Wires (and more recently, no wires, just signals) have been creeping and crawling into my life so slowly, I was lulled into distraction, taking on more and more connections until my transformation into (Warning: Star Trek reference coming up) Locutus was complete. I had no idea. I just thought I had put on a little weight.
And then we moved and all those little wires got snipped. Naked (literal) panic ensued.
Today, our friendly neighborhood verizon guy, Greg, came over for about eight hours to install fiber optic cables in our home and reconnect me. I have spent the last few days in information limbo, unable to communicate with friends by any method other than mail. Actual, in the mail, mail. I had to look up a place of business in the physical yellowpages. If New York was burning down in my absence, I had no way of knowing. My sister had gone out on a blind date on Sat. night and I had yet to know how it had gone! Quelle horreur!
Despite the somewhat personal information emerging on this blog, I'm actually a pretty private soul. I rarely talk on the phone. I tend to get (very) behind on my email correspondence, and I have only twice engaged in a comment conversation on a website (one was an article on slate.com that rated charities, so I felt compelled to mention that LDS Humanitarian services gives one hundred percent to its charitable causes because the lay people who run it aren't paid and someone flamed me about the Mormon church sucking the life out of its members with tithing demands, ending with an expletive that rhymes with "Truck View!"). I don't have a myspace page. I can't stand friendster, linkedIn, and other networking sites. Anyway, I thought an old pre-intertube fuddy-duddy like me, I was autonomous still--that the cell phone in my pocket was for emergencies and that I use the web only for news, kind of like a personal Walter Kronkite. Wrong, wrong, and wrong.
I'm beginning to appreciate the old mentality of community, when the only social contact a person could get was with the locals within a few blocks of you. I'm fascinated by the explosion of friend-seeking behavior the internet has spawned, where we have to know and know and KNOW people. Our social appetites seem voracious, beyond greedy. And yet, for all of it, I sense a continuing loneliness in the constant connection.
Thomas has made instant friends with the little boy who lives next door to us. A flesh and blood friend. He's been my guide this past week in an internetless world. He might lament not being able to play on pbskids.org, but it's not the same disconnect for him that it's been for me. He's so fearless--"Hello", followed by "Can you play?"
I'm logged back in now. I just can't let the craving for friends out in the world eclipse meeting friends here. Being too connected is its own form of disconnect.
Of course, I'm posting this on a blog, so maybe the irony of it all will force the observation to collapse in on itself, creating a black hole and sucking me and this computer into it, obliterating all my ahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!.....
blip.
And then we moved and all those little wires got snipped. Naked (literal) panic ensued.
Today, our friendly neighborhood verizon guy, Greg, came over for about eight hours to install fiber optic cables in our home and reconnect me. I have spent the last few days in information limbo, unable to communicate with friends by any method other than mail. Actual, in the mail, mail. I had to look up a place of business in the physical yellowpages. If New York was burning down in my absence, I had no way of knowing. My sister had gone out on a blind date on Sat. night and I had yet to know how it had gone! Quelle horreur!
Despite the somewhat personal information emerging on this blog, I'm actually a pretty private soul. I rarely talk on the phone. I tend to get (very) behind on my email correspondence, and I have only twice engaged in a comment conversation on a website (one was an article on slate.com that rated charities, so I felt compelled to mention that LDS Humanitarian services gives one hundred percent to its charitable causes because the lay people who run it aren't paid and someone flamed me about the Mormon church sucking the life out of its members with tithing demands, ending with an expletive that rhymes with "Truck View!"). I don't have a myspace page. I can't stand friendster, linkedIn, and other networking sites. Anyway, I thought an old pre-intertube fuddy-duddy like me, I was autonomous still--that the cell phone in my pocket was for emergencies and that I use the web only for news, kind of like a personal Walter Kronkite. Wrong, wrong, and wrong.
I'm beginning to appreciate the old mentality of community, when the only social contact a person could get was with the locals within a few blocks of you. I'm fascinated by the explosion of friend-seeking behavior the internet has spawned, where we have to know and know and KNOW people. Our social appetites seem voracious, beyond greedy. And yet, for all of it, I sense a continuing loneliness in the constant connection.
Thomas has made instant friends with the little boy who lives next door to us. A flesh and blood friend. He's been my guide this past week in an internetless world. He might lament not being able to play on pbskids.org, but it's not the same disconnect for him that it's been for me. He's so fearless--"Hello", followed by "Can you play?"
I'm logged back in now. I just can't let the craving for friends out in the world eclipse meeting friends here. Being too connected is its own form of disconnect.
Of course, I'm posting this on a blog, so maybe the irony of it all will force the observation to collapse in on itself, creating a black hole and sucking me and this computer into it, obliterating all my ahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!.....
blip.
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