Jul 12, 2003

Let's Talk About the Internet

LET'S TALK ABOUT THE INTERNET

Ok, on the one hand doing this is giving me a slightly sick feeling inside. On the other hand, what else was I going to do this afternoon? Write? HA!

One of the reasons why I've been reluctant to enter this whole morass of blogging is that I've become very concerned recently about the influence this whole blogging phenomenon is having on our little community. The other night at Charlie's Kitchen, somebody made a joke that we would soon all be sitting around a table blogging to wireless-connected laptops and not actually speaking to one another. Now that will never happen, but I do believe that the internet is having some sort of effect on how people interact socially.

I don't know whose concept it is, but in urban planning there's this concept of "soft city" vs. "hard city". The hard city is the physical reality of any given city: it's buildings, roads, etc. The soft city is any given person's experience of the city, e.g., where they work, how they walk to work, the places they frequent, etc. A "city" is lots of soft cities imposed on one unalterable hard city.

I'm thinking that the net and net-related space represent a third kind of city within that framework, let's call it a "ghost city," because it doesn't really exist. Like the soft city, each person's ghost city is unique, we all visit different websites, blogs, etc. And indeed therein is formed a community of sorts. Within this community one finds people from one's own soft city, but also others not within that sphere, people you don't know, from far away, etc. There's a danger to the ghost city that I haven't quite figured out yet.

Within the ghost city, it is possible to find a kind of ghost intimacy, a feeling of connection with others which is real, but also slightly surreal. It's easy to get sucked into chat rooms, etc. and have a feeling of communion with other people, or to read blogs, etc. and get a sense like you are interacting/communicating with a given person. However, like ghosts, the "people" there are insubstantial, you're not talking to X person, you're not visiting X person when you visit their blog. And no, you're not having sex with X person, either... However, it is easy to fall into that ghost intimacy and think that you're connecting...

As the ghost city grows, does the soft city shrink? Anyone?




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