ham Wrote:The internet is a joke.
Certainly is.
Just a while back, I took my first trip to the US. I was down in California, and figured I'd get in touch with some long-time Internet contacts. One of them drove down to San Jose from San Francisco, and he and I drove back to San Francisco for sushi in the Marina District. I learned more about him in that wonderful round trip than I had in years of emails. What a fine gentleman and perfect ambassador and host he was.
Even the phone is better. The pauses between statements, the laughs, the choking-on-coffee at critical moments of the conversation. All of these cues tell us more about who and what people really are than any number of emoticons and bullshit words.
Two years of socializing with real people ... quite refreshing. Polite. Uplifting. Nothing like most of what gets done on the Net.
Quinn
(So what if I haven't written a short story or novel or poem in the last two years ... at least I'm gathering some good material.)
[Addendum: In the "The Internet is a Joke" sense, perhaps I do have some new insight about DL over these last two years....
I'm not convinced I want my children (two of whom are now about the age one is to enter higher education) anywhere near DL. I'd much rather they go to a brick-and-mortar institution. Not because of the quality of education, or the general acceptability of the mode of instruction ... but because the Internet experience is entirely unlike the brick-and-mortar experience. I've had both, and think the b&m experience is healthier. I didn't at the time ... but hindsight is 20/20. And here by "experience" I mean the appropriate socialization factor.]