re: The End of Alone [telecom]
- From: Will Roberts <oldbear@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2009 23:40:16 -0500 (EST)
In Telecom Digest (Vol 28 # 39), Monty Solomon wrote:
Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 23:39:43 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: redacted@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: The End of Alone
The End of Alone
By Neil Swidey
At our desk, on the road, or on a remote beach, the world is a tap
away. It's so cool. And yet it's not. What we lose with our constant
connectedness. . . .
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
The following is from the January 1995 issue of M.I.T.'s "Technology Review"
magazine:
CHRISTMAS UNPLUGGED
-------------------
By
Amy Bruckman
If I had a network link, I'd be home now.
From my chaise lounge on the terrace of my parents' Miami Beach
apartment, I see a grid of four-line roads with palm-treed median
strips, yachts moored on the inland waterway, a golf course, and a dozen
tall white condominiums. The hum of traffic is punctuated by the soft
thunk of racquets striking tennis balls somewhere below. The temperature
is in the 70s and a breeze blows through my toes. I am a long way from
Boston. If I had a net link, I'd know exactly how far.
I'd know the weather forecast for Miami, and, if I cared, for
Boston too. Just about anything you might like to know is out there on
the worldwide computer network -- the Net -- if you know where to look.
It's Christmas day in Miami, but I'm not sure it would really be
Christmas or I would really be in Miami if I were plugged into the Net.
I would be in my virtual office, a "room" in the text-based virtual
reality environment where I do most of my work. I have a desk there,
piled with things to do, and a fish tank -- just like my "real" office.
Except that the virtual fish don't need to be fed -- they're just a
program I created one day while procrastinating from real work. My
virtual office is just some data on a computer housed at MIT that I can
tap into from anywhere, but it is a place to me. When I log onto the
network, I am there.
And I would be there right now, if not for a difficult choice I
made two days ago. I was packed for my trip south and had called a cab.
I had the important things: airline ticket, wallet, bathing suit. I
stood in the hall staring at a padded gray bag, the one containing my
Macintosh PowerBook computer. I grabbed the bag, double-locked the
door, and started to walk down the hall. I stopped. I went back,
opened the door, and put down the gray bag. I stood in the doorway,
feeling foolish. The taxi honked. The honk gave me courage: I locked
up again, leaving my computer -- my office -- behind.
A vacation should be about escaping from routines; going somewhere
else provides a new perspective. But when I travel with my PowerBook, I
bring many of my routines with me. I can readily gain access to all my
familiar tools for finding information. It's as if I never left. And
that's the problem. Had I brought my computer, I would not have written
this essay (for which I am using a pencil). Instead, I would have
logged onto the network and entered its seductive, engrossing world. By
now I would have read the newswire and Miss Manners's column, answered a
dozen questions from friends and colleagues, and possible posted by
thoughts on a movie I saw last night to a public discussion group. It
would be as if I never left home.
The network destroys a sense of time as well as place. Daily and
seasonal rhythms are subtle at best. As morning turns to evening, I am
more likely to bump into my friends in Hawaii, less likely to encounter
my friends in England. In the summer, things quiet down. April 1st is
the only real network holiday -- don't believe anything you read that
day! Beyond that, life on the Net proceeds at an even, unpunctuated
pace. There are no holiday decorations on the Net.
On my flight down here I saw a young boy carrying a sleek black bag
on his shoulder. He held it naturally, but with a hint of importance.
It took me a moment to see the logo: it contained his Nintendo Game Boy.
His generation sees nothing remarkable about traveling at all times with
a computer. It is already possible to connect to the network from a
palm-sized computer with a cellular link. As computers get smaller and
cheaper, we will lose even the excuse of the weight of that black bag or
the cost of losing it.
The Net is becoming an important part of the lives of a broader
segment of the population. Its spread presents a worrisome challenge:
is it ever possible for us to take uninterrupted time off any more? The
new technologies of connectedness are pushing people to blend their many
roles into one: personal mail is mixed with professional correspondence,
and work crises arrive on a cellular phone during leisure time. If our
coworkers and competitors have made themselves perpetually available, we
feel all the more pressure to do the same, lest we be left behind. One
of my colleagues deliberately vacations in places so remote that getting
a Net connection is almost impossible -- it's the only way she can get a
real break, and, for a little while at least, be a carefree newlywed
instead of a world-renowned researcher. But such exotic locales are
getting harder and harder to find.
I love the network and the people and the places I find there. But
sometimes I find it important to disconnect -- to leave the cellular
phone and the beeper in a desk drawer, leave that padded gray bag at
home. To be out of touch, not for hours but for days. To leave behind
routines, both virtual and real.
----------
[Fourteen years ago, when this was written, Amy Bruckman was a doctoral
student in the MIT Media Laboratory and known for creating MediaMOO, a
text-base virtual reality environment for media researchers. She is now
an associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology affiliated
with the School of Interactive Computing.]
----------
Of course, we can reach back 75 years to the 1932 classic film "Grand Hotel"
in which the great actress Greta Garbo delivered the line which will always
be associated with her: "I want to be alone."
Twitter, anyone? Really?
Regards,
Will
.
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