Comments on: Ancient Instant Messenger

By: khephret

khephret — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 06:11:50 +0000

“My friend JK talks a lot about what he calls â€œancient instant messenger,â€ which I take to mean something like this invisible connection that we can develop and share with other people - even at a great distance (I referenced it in my first podcast, actually). Some might call it telepathy, or maybe even compassion. But whatever it is, itâ€™s a pre-existing thing within the human mind, heart and soul that the internet has only made more concrete, more visible.”

I’ve experienced this quite a few times. I have a close friend from childhood whom I’ve stayed in contact with for a very long time through the aether. The fact that she until very recently lived in Alaska and I have lived in Oregon, Washington and now California doesn’t seem to have made communication in this way any more difficult than simply calling her up.
She and I have a long history of having emails cross each other through the internet, handwritten letters that crossed through the mail with spontaneously-chosen similar subjects….we’ve always been very close spiritually although extremely distant physically. I’ve always wondered if I could try this with anyone else….

On another note I’d have to say that I wouldn’t miss the Internet one bit if it were gone. I’ve recently found out about an 80-acre plot in the Sierras that I could conceiveably get my hands on for a song….why wait for the collapse? Why not escape long beforehand?

-k

By: Tim Boucher

Tim Boucher — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 01:06:14 +0000

whyâ€™s it always have to be one extreme or the other?

Why is it that everyone is so often accusing one another of “binary thinking”? I see this all the time…

By: pmp

pmp — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 19:24:59 +0000

P.S. said:

…but recently Iâ€™ve begun to think about pulling the plug.

why’s it always have to be one extreme or the other?

By: Tim Boucher

Tim Boucher — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 17:32:37 +0000

Here it is â€” me battling about a dozen people! haha.

I’m not going to promote that kind of behavior, sorry!

By: Philip Schoolcraft

Philip Schoolcraft — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 14:48:32 +0000

I agree. Over the past five years or so, I’ve spent far too much time on the web - reading political blogs, engaging in pointless debates with other internet-dependent geeks, or just reflexively surfing from site to site. There’s MORE out there! I’ve gotta see ALL of it! Gotta KNOW! Talk about your Faustian bargains. Paradoxically, in a very real sense my life is more impoverished now than before the internet. Instead of writing actual letters, I tap out little phatic emails to friends. Instead of spending time outdoors in the actual world, I sit alone in front of a screen (so much for virtual “community”). Thanks to the internet, I’ve assembled far more information in all forms than I can possibly assimilate in what remains of my life. I can’t speak for anyone else, of course, but recently I’ve begun to think about pulling the plug.

By: Drew Hempel

Drew Hempel — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 02:46:45 +0000

Here it is — me battling about a dozen people! haha.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/200...0/glutton_for_punishment.php#comments

By: skip sievert

skip sievert — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 23:02:40 +0000

I actually printed up thousands of technocracy brochures that I wrote, and went around and put them under windshield wipers at the state capitol and elsewhere last year. Now I figure I am actually probably reaching more people.

I would probably do more of that, if it went down for a few days. Ha.

By: Mr. Blind

Mr. Blind — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 22:25:40 +0000

If the internet went down forever I’d probably stay inside for a few days until people who play MMORPGS stop rampaging, because I’ve definitely seen some anger fits thrown over 15 minutes of the game being down.

By: Gnomely

Gnomely — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 22:15:26 +0000

Yeah, I come aross as an adjusted human being in real life, the internet allows me the persona of being a retarded dadaist.

By: Steven Kruyswijk

Steven Kruyswijk — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 21:05:09 +0000

Good point about our dependence on the Internet for the kind of debate that is near to our hearts. Why wouldn’t we be able to do that in real life?

It reminded me of an essay by Douglas Rushkoff called ‘What’s Next‘, in which he also discusses a possible transcendence from the Internet to a more close-to-home version of a global brain, namely one running on the trusted biological server inside your skull.

Could the internet really function as a global gnostic catalyst? As a pair of crutches that can support us in the journey of regaining our intuitive, right-brain faculties amidst a left-brain conformist society? It’ll be interesting to see how it unfolds.

By: pmp

pmp — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 20:56:18 +0000

…when was the last time you tried to have a conversation in real life about this stuff?

heh, my and my friends’ conversations have been known to cause psychotic episodes up to half a block away.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 20:42:22 +0000

If the internet was down forever

I would miss it. Then go batshit crazy for a few hours, make some improvised explosives, get my crazy anarchist friends together to fight the archons who we would belive to be preparing to end our free lives forever.
And then, as with other times this came close to happening on a smaller scale for a much smaller reason several times before, a beautiful girl would put it in perspective and I would realize it’s not that big of a deal. But I would miss this site. and Olde English (www.oldeenglish.org) and wikipeidia. But other then that, i’d just spend way more time at the library.