thoughts on this? technology's grip on our daily habits has undoubtedly changed us. i remember reading somewhere that our physiology will change as decades and centuries pass (if they pass) as we morph into more a more sedentary people and person-to-person interaction becomes less and less necessary. i don't know how much of that has been positive on a personal basis. the fact that i even have almost 10,000 posts on this message board - most of which have been absolutely useless - is pretty much proof (in my case at least) of some of that.

i don't know, its hard to compare eras or say you wish you lived in a different one so i won't do that here, but i do feel like technology, in some forms, has done some things to us i wish it hadn't. hopefully this makes sense to somebody else. im obviously as much of a proponent of the better parts of technology as anybody, i just don't know what the trade-off is becoming, you know? its almost like a disease, because im in here discussing this with a buncha people i'll never meet instead of in a cafe or something somewhere trying to figure this out with friends or family or whatever. maybe thats part of the disease, i don't know.

rousseau talked about this

No he didn't. Shut up.

So Wall-E got it right?

Hey, like shutup and stuff, fatty....Anyway, I can't wait for my blue-ray and my flat screen and my touch iPod and my touch iPhone. I'll never have to bother with a person again.

People seem afraid of people. I dont have the best social skills, but I do like to interact with people and all I see is hesitation.

Articulate
[adj., n. ahr-tik-yuh-lit; v. ahr-tik-yuh-leyt]
1. capable of speech; not speechless.
2. using language easily and fluently; having facility with words.
3. racial slur used to insult a black person who can *gasp* actually speak well.

Isn't this a major topic/theme in Fight Club as well?

We were having a discussion in chat last night about how walking in to a bar where you know nobody is akin to logging on to a message board for the first time. However, I think in society, that walk into the bar is a lot harder to adjust to and meet people than the message board setting.

I wish more people didn't think it was weird that a stranger would want to engage them in discussion in real life. We are human beings on and off the computer, but it seems like many of us are our truest selves on the computer.

I feel like I want to quit this internet world soon.

One of the great things about my trip was the polish and bulgarian girls I met. Funny how being foreigners makes people relate more to each other.

i know i could never do this, but i don't think i'd want to. there are pieces of the internet i wish i could ignore, and unfortunately, with me anyway, its either the whole package or nothing, and there's no way giving up certain parts of the interwebs is at all practical right now. just doesn't make sense, even if i feel a thoreau-ian pull away from this stuff.

there's something to be said for throwing yourself out there in unsure person-to-person situations that you don't get on the internet though. the anonymity kind of squelches a lot of genuine things here.

It's a weird dichotomy: there's a very real element on the internet, and there's a very fake element, and both of them stem from the anonymity. More or less though I need to get real work done and stop fucking around on the internet soon.

yeah, i don't really have any friends either

yeah, technology has played a part, definitely, but it's also the way people have acted towards each other for centuries now. i think that's were a lot of the hesitation and lack of trust to approach strangers comes from. terrorism, identity theft, different ideologies, political correctness, all these fears and bullshit i think also play a big part in keeping people from being more open and engaging. it's just easier to avoid the hassle of having to consider and accomodate for all of this.

i don't know, it's tough for sure. i've practically given up on trying to discuss "serious" issues even with my family, which i was very close to for a long time, and that's because our views are so different now on so many things, that if we actually engaged in that kind of dialogue, i'm pretty sure i'd end up expelled from the clan. it is all polite bullshit now, which sucks big time.

This.

It doesn't have to be this way.
I'm due for a break from the screen soon myself.




Reid and I had a short conversation about socializing on the Internet vs socializing out in our daily lives. It's not like you can go up to a person at the grocery store and say, "Hey, nice to meet you, I'm parchy...wanna discuss Hemingway?"

It doesn't work that way. But on the Internet there is an advantage. You can post a thread titled "Hemingway discussion" and you'll get more hits, rather than getting hit in the eye by a piece of produce.

As far as the sedentary lifestyle that can develop from extended Internet usage? That's the part I think people most naturally struggle with, especially during the winter. But the action of forming good habits applied prior to the Internet and it still applies today. It just depends on the person I suppose.

Now that mobile technologies allow us to take the web with us, I think we actually might see a resurgence of getting out and doing stuff.