I have come to a great conclusion that the Internet is really cool – duh! But like all newer tools, it has its problems – duh dum! Still I can reach people all around the world – dum duh dum! So okay I’m not the brilliant scholar I like to think of myself as. And yes the Internet and the PC is a new tool. Particularly when you consider the knowledge span from when my father was born until today, as I sit writing this. I grew up with a father who was born in 1901. He actually did walk miles to school. He was born before cars, the tool of the day, were as common place as now. He bought the first Model in farming neighborhood and brought it home to much exclaim. My aunts and uncles were still talking about that first Model A they ever saw decades later, even after he had passed away. He died after a man had landed on the moon. Years after that car purchase I was born in 1946. I remember coming sitting home with my sister in the back seat of the current car and peering out the windos to see a mysterious blue glow emanating from the house. Immediately we knew what it was. A TV! We had a television! I don’t know if we were the first in the neighborhood but we had one. And that was miraculous. There it was the far, far world in our living room! Since then I have seen and been a part of the growth of this digital village and the development of computers, from massive main frames to 7″ mini laptops. These are delightful thoughts when I think that between my father and myself our journeys span the walking to school era to astronauts working in a space station while orbiting the earth and instantaneous worldwide communication on an individual level with cell phones and personal computers. With this blog I have communicated with people in Bulgaria whom I never have met in person. My father would have been stunned – scared but delightfully so. The Internet is cool, really, really cool. But yes there are problems and the human element.

In my efforts to strengthen this Blog’s profile, web presence and possibility of success, I have taken up the habit of joining every social networking site in the virtual universe. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedn, Tagged and more have all become part of range of activities. So, I get onto Facebook thinking it will help some of the loneliness that is part of working separate from others and in the meantime, helping spread the word of this oh so marvelous and erudite blog. Wandering about the hallways of FaceBook I check into this party here and that party there. I see friends that I know and some I never knew. Some people see me and are glad and others would rather not. Broken conversations abound with topics ranging from “I’m tired” to “So and So’s music sucks” to “the President a dolt!” (I think two years ago a different group was saying the same thing!) to “What’s for dinner?”, she’s hot and he’s not. They are broken conversations sometimes taking hours to complete, but it seems to be fun. Thinking to join in I post something, to family, friends and soon to be friends and I get nothing! Okay I try something more personal and wish a sister a Happy Birthday and still nothing. Somethings never change. I feel somewhat of a success as I have achieved the same social status in the virtual world as the one I enjoy in the physical world! Yet, memories of dinner parties past arrive in my courtyard of memories. Rejection sets in and I shut off this machine of mass communication. Deject, depressed and despondent I depart. Dragging my diminished soul out the door, I’m directed by that inner dialogue to get a cup of the divine, the good old blonde and sweet, at that domain of dialogue. the Rush Rush café. A delicious idea, I say.

So I saunter over to the old Rush Rush, to see what there is to see. Stealthily, I survey this salubrious spot of sanctity. Quickly I spot a safe perch where Big Tech is studying FaceBook. What else?. Still, the murky cloud of gloom departs upon seeing such a friendly face up close and personal. Gathering my refreshment from YaYa I quickly alight and settle in next to Big Tech. All seems well but then I hear a confessional interchange next to me. I surreptitiously sneak a peek and Gawd! It’s a pair of the local Recovery Again group. Us local birds have given them this name as they seem to enjoy the “recovery” process so much that they keep starting over at the beginning again and again. Straining my ears not to hear, I learn more about the confessee’s tactics and peccadilloes than his mother would ever want to know. And they call these groups anonymous!?! Hmmmm? I say. On the Net I can’t get a conversation and here at the Rush Rush I can’t get away from one. It’s a conundrum, I tell you. So I revert to my musical memory and think of Louie Armstrong singing What a Wonderful World and I am at peace. Still I do wonder where and how this fits in with the Social Contract.

But not to be deterred from enjoying the morning cup, I let my gaze wander. I don’t have to worry about my mind, as that seems to be its perpetual activity. Looking across the pond and search for activity at the Raven’s nest but to no avail. All is quiet at her roost. Louwhoyou, whoyoulou and youwholou are not to be found. I don’t think so, but they just might be working! Oh well, I guess I can talk to the person next to me.

“The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.”
Mark Twain – Notebook, 1898

Keep ‘em smiling!

Gump’s Brother

 

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 1st, 2009 at 10:15 pm and is filed under August, Information. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.