April 19, 2007
A community of perpetual strangers?
What follows is an extract from a speech by the late David Lochhead. I wonder, and this is a genuine wonder, I don't know the answer, how much has changed in the ten years since he gave it.
Let me try to characterize the world as I experience it on the Web. It is first, a culture of isolated individuals, wandering in what seems like random paths through Cyberspace. When I journey on the Web, I journey by myself. On the way, I encounter people, but we are as ships passing in the night. Occasionally, I discover a fellow traveller, someone whose Web page reflects some of my interests. For a few days, we might exchange e-mail. We might cross link our pages. But very soon we pass on, left only as traces in the form of entries in our respective e-mail address lists.
To what shall we compare the culture of the Web? I imagine that if we were to conduct a kind of free association brain storming, the list of our comparisons might well go on for ever. The image that has impressed itself on me lately, however, is that of the Carnival midway. A glitzy veneer hides a content of questionable quality. The entertaining competes with the sleazy and the grotesque. And behind it all seems to lurk an endless array of gigantic egos - carnival performers, if you like - each with their own "home page." One stall competes with the other to be today's "hot spot." Technique abolishes substance. And the web surfer wanders up the midway, pausing at some attractions and ignoring others, quite indifferent to the faces of the crowd who wander the midway with him and not usually interested in the faces of those who work the carnival stalls, either. That is not to say that there is no community on the Web. But what the Web constructs is a community and a culture of perpetual strangers."
Posted by richard at April 19, 2007 01:04 PMI appreciate the quote. I wonder how much has changed. It is time to unplug for some time in the sphere of friends and family rather than cybersphere.
I worked in a carnival as a youth and the sounds of my barking in the joint to get people to spend their money resonates through my brain, "One for 20, Two for 35, pick a lucky duck and win a prize everytime."
Of course, the prizes were only worth a penny or two.
Posted by: David Zinger at April 19, 2007 05:27 PMDavid, Tim Berners-Lee once wrote, "I had (and still have) a dream that the Web could be less of a television channel and more of an interactive sea of shared knowledge. I imagine it immersing us as a warm, friendly environment made of the things we and our friends have seen, heard, believed or figured out. I would like it to bring our friends and colleagues closer, in that by working on this knowledge together we can come to better understandings."
I guess my imagined audience I write for here is closer to Tim Berners-Lee's vision than the place David Lochhead was talking about - I write for my friends and the welcome guest like yourself.
So here I am torn. I recognise some of what Lochhead talks about as I roam the web, but also see it as an intimate medium, a place where friends, colleagues, people with real relationships can maintain contact in the warm, human way that Tim Berners-Lee talks about.
Posted by: richard at April 19, 2007 07:21 PMrosie@triad29.com
rosieponder@verizon.net
Not only do they try to rip you off, they send your email out and you get a ton of junk mail.