I am alone in dark. I am not lonely, though. My girlfriend is in the room next to me. However, she is not in this room. There is no other in the dark with me except the Internet. Through the Internet there are so many with me now, in this room alone, in the dark. The Internet is with me in most places now. It is with me more than it used to be. It promises to always be with me. It will always be there. The illusory world of interconnectedness promises persistence, and I want it. Not because I am lonely, though. I am not lonely, because my girlfriend is here, though she is not in this room. The interconnection of the Internet is illusory.
Facebook promises a parade of all the world, smiling behind a login page. Everything there is with me now. They are all with me in this small, dark room. But no one is really there at all. It is a fragile facade of wood and stitches. Not even brick and mortar. It is losely linked by primitive constructs of HTML and various coding languages. A fundamental mass of illusory logic. Many bright minds come together to build a decadent, tragic house of cards, collectible friend cards. Here you all are; I can find you from your name alone. You don't even need to know.
I keep getting distracted from my dream. The dream to join dreams. To network the human consciousness. What distracts me from this dream? Survival? Joy? The Internet? Despite a rather liberal time frame, at my current rate, I will never even start. But I do not think that is true. I am still in the prologue. I am still preparing for the beginning. The push is yet to come. Is this a lie? Another distraction? I do not think so.
The Internet is connecting you with me now. It connects me with you. I can find you from your name, and you do not even need to know. It is not weird, it is normal. It is the Internet. How long can you remain off-line? Let's all catch a dream together.
I am now done sitting in the dark alone. Good night Internet. I go to be with my girlfriend to live a dream.
Girlfriend's note:
ReplyDeleteWhile writing the actual entry, the author was seated physically beside me. While he is clearly a liar, he should be forgiven as he is the dwelling-place of many good ideas, and artful enough to know their expression is sometimes better served through deception.
Anywhey:
Do books provide company in the same way the internet does? Cruder and certainly less interactive, but another way of painting a picture of someone's brain for another. Sometimes things come out better online than they would in real life... now, is that due to deception or due to an easier interface? (I'd wager sometimes to both.) But either way, it is an attractive thing.
The publicness of some internet identities is a vulnerable experience. Anyone can see you, and you've less ideas of who and why (see:decorum). Once upon a time, I was many private people (to each individual, I was a different individual), and now I am a somewhat public person(a). In that way, I am merging like many different dreams into one. Which one(s) is/are real? Some average amalgam approximation? Nah. I don't think that's it. Hrm.
How is this interconnection more or less illusory than the interconnection offline? In some ways, the public messages of Facebook seem like little besides vanity. You're not talking to anybody, you're talking to everybody. (Sometimes, just talking to yourself :S ). You don't care if anyone sees it, but why is it there if not to be seen? Storage, I suppose, sometimes. And is there any room for self-talk on the intarwebz?
Networking the human consciousness. Are we ready for what we'd see on the other side of the brain? Maybe it depends on who you're looking at, and maybe your prediction depends on how you see people. It is difficult to not be cynical, and at the same time, I am a romantic. I want very badly for Good Things to be true. Would you be interested in the project if you didn't believe in them? Or at least their potential? (Those are sincere questions.) Maybe they can only come to be when your lifework is complete. :)
Do not forget that through proper nutrition, exercise, modern medicine, neuronal backups (that's your first step!) and cyborg implants, you, as a you, will have plenty of time to complete the mission. However: hajime!
To me it would seem that we have, already at our disposal, many beautifully sophisticated ways of networking human consciousnesses, in the endless variety there is of modes of human interaction. What would be the unique advantages of the sort of networking in which you are interested? And what do you see as being possible disadvantages? Also - does this sound like an essay question?
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