terça-feira, 12 de maio de 2009

i am me and you are you and together we are we

Celino Menezes - Tradutor de Inglês Técnico. Mais de 20 mil páginas traduzidas - maiores informações: celinomenezes@gmail.com

One the things about the internets that I like is the ability to interact on a daily basis with people near and dear to me. I can share pictures and movies, instant messages, read and comment on blog entries, e-mail, and generally keep up with a circle of intimates who choose to share different aspects of their lives via the glorious interconnectivity of the web. It allows me the chance to share more of myself and learn more about my peops in a removed manner. There is fluidity; I am not lording over someone while they shift uncomfortably in their chair. They can skim over the entries that are not to their interest and read thoroughly through those that are at their leisure. I do love spending time face-to-face with my tribe, but sometimes it is difficult to arrange that time together due to the nature of everyone’s busy lives and different locales. Blogs and such allow us to keep close tabs on one another even when we don’t have the luxury of getting together. (Ever since I started reading blogs circa 2000 and found these delicious little inner-circles where many facets of a group had blogs, I dreamt of all my friends and family having blogs, so that I could know more about their goings-on and now it’s happening and I am so ferociously tickled.)

However the internet also allows much anonymity. There are many blogs and journals where I lurk. It is rare that I comment or make myself overtly known to these self-publishers. This allows us to peer into the the belly of someone else’s life without similarly rendering ourselves open. This one-way communication can be illuminating yet it is still passive consumption and more of monologue rather than a dialogue. I am most satisfied when I have true dialogue with someone else, although there are times when I just want to be entertained and find myself drawn to intimate confessions of a life. In my reading I am mostly drawn to memoirs and personal writing. Yet there is a part of me that wants to reach out and connect. But I am also afraid and shy. I am in a quandary as to what I want more.

This anonymity, which allows people to act a part of their personality that generally is squashed by social conditioning and fear of poisoning the personal reputation, also allows us to act as virtual window shoppers in and out of the billions (trillions?) of web pages that fill the terrabytes of servers that render pages on our monitors.

I find more of a connection with those I already know and those who are honest and direct because that is what aspire to. I want to be honest with myself (and others) and want to own who I am because I think that I the best way to become who I want to be, live the life I dream of, and be the change I wish to see. So thanks to you who make this more of dialogue and who share of yourselves so that the hive mind is strengthened.




I am still learning the value of dialogue via this medium, since it’s such a integral part of your life, and because otherwise we’re always talking face to face. But I love to read your posts and I know that these comments help encourage more interesting insight, so keep on keeping on my love.

I too have thought a lot about the various ways our communication is changing and evolving.
I haven’t completely digested the long term impact, determined how this affects my ability to verbalize thoughts and feeling, or seen the full outcome.
But, I love to be just a click away from my friends and family.