21 September 2009

Why I don't post that often

There is no mistaking it: this is the fifteen millisecond era.

I may have misnamed it; perhaps fifteen milliseconds is too long. For those of you who don't know what a millisecond is: "milli" roughly means "thousand." Yes, this means that "million" means something different in various parts of the world than it does in the United States. But that's not relevant right now. A thousandth of a second is an almost imperceptable amount of time to humans. Our eyes take a relatively long time to process the world around us: we see in chunks of one-tenth of a second at a time. Events that happen in a millisecond are too small to be comprehended.

But that's how fast the world moves. As a byproduct of technology, we expect things to get faster as technology improves. Some of the things we expect to speed up are not, strictly speaking, technological - like human understanding.

An example would be the recent scandal - if you can call it that - over a recent inappropriate broadcast. I won't say of what and from who, because if you're in the know, you know, and the salient details are irrelevant. But someone heard an important person talking, explicitly off the record, and in his fervor to be the first, best, brightest, fastest, he broadcast this supposedly off-record comment around the world.

Sometimes, we make the world move too fast. We do things because they can be done, rather than thinking things through. We get used to sending out mass text messages to all our friends about the tinniest worthless details of our lives, and so when something comes along that should, technically speaking, be kept private, our trained behaviour kicks in anyway. Some people can't not talk about something. They are what those in the intelligence industry call "high risk." Something happens in the world, and they respond.

How does this relate to me, and this website, and my infrequent posting schedule? Because it is, as with a lot of things on the internet, perpetuated by the constant illusion of community.

I've gotten in trouble for my definition of "community" before, back in college when we were assigned a word to define. Words are funny things; they mean different things to different people. Despite what your dictionary may assert, there are as many definitions to any given word as there are people who speak the language. That in and of itself could be an interesting study, if someone has the time and the funding: ask a thousand people to define something that should be simple, like "friend," or "relationship," or "physics." And those are just the abstract words, the ones that don't have any explicit tie to the real world but are instead concepts dreamed up by humanity. Things get even more interesting when you ask people to define - or, better yet, draw - something that has a real-world concept, like a chair. You'll get a picture of something you can sit on, sure enough, but that's all they'll have in common. Word are funny that way: we use them to express ourselves, but they are as transient and formless as the wind.

But I digress. Community. The word means different things to different people. To me, a community is a group of people who live in the same geographic area.

This eliminates a lot of what other people consider to be a community. They say it includes people who share the same interests, know the same people, use the same technological device, have the same hairstyle, etc. Both definitions, mine and theirs, are technically true. But I posit that the latter definiton is an illusion.

Picture this: you post frequently in some forum or website. People get to know you, or at least the you that you've allowed to be shown. You get to know other people who do the same thing: they don't share everything, but enough to at least appreciate that they are living, breathing entities who you can perhaps give a proper amount of respect as to their opinion.

Then you recieve word that they've died. What's your response?

Now, again, same scenario, except this time you see these people on a regular basis in real life. You've gotten to know them, you hang out with them all the time, you've talked, maybe all of you are friends. And then one of them dies. What's your response?

An even better question: under which scenario would you be going to a funeral?

Extreme example? Perhaps. But my main point is that the old adage is still true: On the internet, no one knows you're a dog. People on the internet are faceless, worth less than the two milliseconds it took for your LCD screen to render their text.

And yes, that estimate of worth includes me. That's why I don't post that often: I haven't been enraptured by the illusion of community that persists on the 'net. I only post when I have something I think needs to be said, even if it's just a lone voice shouting at the formless void of eternity, even if all I am to you is a single voice in a cast of billions. Sometimes I think of all of the people of the world, all of them clamoring for fifteen milliseconds of your attention, all scrabbling to be the first to report on something, anything, even if it turns out to be false or at the very least innacurate, just to get at you somehow - and I turn away from the keyboard. "Is what I have to say really worth the trouble?" I ask myself, and then I hear of yet another person who sacrificed accuracy or integrity or both in the drive to be first, and I answer, "No."

Which is part of why this is a blog that isn't. I don't share every sordid detail of my life with absolute strangers. I just post bits and pieces, and the rest you'll have to imagine for yourself. I'll never be like the people who post something every day, or even those who post every other day. I'm just not that prolific. Some days I'd like to be, but I also like sitting down and thinking about the world, all on my own, and then coming back with something real.

Just imagine if the internet was real.