In 1981 Raymond Carver published a collection of short stories called “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” – also the title of a sad and powerful story in the collection. Carver’s theme, as you will know if you have read his work, was the abyss between people, the yearning to reach out, to love each other, and the difficulty we humans have in doing just that.
But now, nearly three decades later, we have entered a new age. Emotional expression has been boiled down to sound bytes – tweets, texts, blog posts, scribbles on facebook walls and all the other modern tricks we employ to fill in the vacuum of life’s random moments. This constant chatter in short electronic bursts can give us the feeling that there is no distance between one human soul and another, no alienation at all.
I wonder whether we as a culture are gradually mutating as a result of Twitterization. I don’t believe for a moment that we have found a magic cure for alienation, for misunderstanding, for the essential distance between us all. But I do think we may have found a drug that dulls our perception of these things. If you can send and receive dozens of little messages throughout the day, post your moments to Facebook, type out 140 character epiphanies into the aether, then perhaps you can create the illusion that the demons are at bay – the demons of loneliness, the demons of sorrow.
The demons of mortality.
In Carver’s world, people regularly found themselves face to face with their essential loneliness. But now – thanks to the miracle of modern technology – we can create walls of chatter throughout the day that shield us from those feelings.
Perhaps this is a good thing – maybe the drugs help.
Who am I to judge?
I struggle with these questions often. Obviously, I’m a user… But I mourn the gradual loss of what I consider normal human interaction… Is it nostalgia for an outdated form of communication? I hold the lost art of hand written correspondance in high esteem, but, I’m not about to start writing letters and dropping them off with the postman… On one hand, I’m in normal, regular communication with so many more people from my past than would have been otherwise possible… In yesterworld, we would have slowly drifted away until communication just stopped… maybe an occasional Christmas card… Now, i know, on a regular basis, what the kids I went to high school with, and haven’t seen in decades, are having for dinner…
Face to face interaction is still an important part of my life. But, it seems that we communicate so much now with bleeps, blips, and instant satisfaction… remember the days when very few people had answering machines? then we grew to expect people to have them… Now we’ve moved so far beyond that that it’s unusual to not have a cellphone… Everyone’s got one… It’s kind of odd and irritating when you find someone without one, and in a strange way irritating that everyone has one on them ALWAYS. Which means, as a culture, we expect to ALWAYS be able to get a hold of someone when we want… to talk, text, or tweet. The rare obstacles being airplane flights, and rafting trips in the Amazon… Actually, we can probably text, tweet, and bleep from there now as well… Wouldn’t be surprised…
I’m sure my nostalgia for old fashioned face to face communication will be considered quaint, dated, and simple by my grandkids… I’ll expect daily tweets from them telling me so…
I happened to be face to face with loneliness when I met a former colleague again I haven’t seen for somewhat about eight years.
Oh, sure we were chatting, but not talking to each other. I hardly ever have felt so lonely like when I was being with this colleague.
And guess what I thought, we can be friends on facebook so we somewhat keep in touch, but that is all.
Chattering, twittering let’s us keep in touch with people we do not really care for. It perhaps let us feel not alone, if there isn’t anybody in our real lives who cares.
It takes the chance away to be alone with ourselves and to cope with it. It is in many ways like a radio against the silence.
Huh? Can’t hear you… my radio must be on too loud… Playing James Taylor’s “I don’t want to be lonely tonight” cranked up to 11.
Seriously, Dagmar, I think you hit the nail on the head… Blipper, tweep, and Crazebook are great ways to tacitly keep your finger on someone that you don’t really care about any more… and of course… verse vica
Pretty soon, the chaos of the bleeps will become the one voice of the Collective… The Borg are never lonely..
Maybe this form of communication could be called blorgging.
@Troy: While rethinking this, I have to admit that on my facebook friend list there are some real friends I care for a lot. But I usually find other ways to communicate with those too. 😉
But in general things like facebook, Skype, etc. leave us to a funny kind of communication without commitment.
You can just comment on stuff if you like to and if you don’t like, you can see it as some kind of pink noise and forget about it. I actually prefer Perlin noise, like on this blog. 🙂
Ah, I thought I heard a familiar noise…
Speaking to Dagmar’s point, I’ve noticed that I don’t spend any time on Facebook (I have an account, but never look at it). I certainly have some very close friends there, but I don’t use Facebook as my way to communicate with them.
And I pretty much stopped using Skype to chat a while back, except for some specific utilitarian purpose (ie: overseas phone call or quick work-related communication). So for me, the cyber-techniques for “communication without commitment” are clearly not fulfilling a need.
Hm, I have to admit… since I’m not much of a handwriting person (left-handed, badly trained, abyssmal style) I’ve actually found those (more or less) social networks to be much closer to my style of communication.
I never managed to really stay in touch with friends (well, o.k., I don’t really like to phone either, I find that as un-commiting as writing) – now I seem to at least.
And hey, I’ve even met people via Skype that I now consider to be personal friends.
Then again, I’ve been digital since I was 14 (mid 80ies) and active in the BBS scene once I got my first modem (and then UUCP of course).
*shrugs* That may just be the early border line of going digital…
It seems to me that the evolving electronic forms of communication break down into two basic categories: directed, conversant forms such as email and texting; and broader, non-specific broadcasting such as twitter, facebook, etc. My observation here is that when blogging is done well, it quickly morphs from category two to category one as more personalities reveal themselves and become part of the discourse.
The direct communication modes have an obvious practical function. In contrast, the amorphous broadcasting modes, on the surface, seem far less useful. More emotionally based. I personally am tempted to regard them as trivial.
However, it is possible they are in fact filling a basic animal need for meta communication; as dogs and wolves mark their territories with information for passers by to interpret, as so many creatures have scenting mechanisms to broadcast information to others of both their own and other species, for both reproduction and for territoriality and survival, it seems to me very natural that we are developing our own, long range and enduring mode of sanitized, legitimized, forest graffiti.
Ben. I will direct this at you…
I like your analogy to marking territory… In cyberspace, there is a huge and growing space to be marked… Let the graffiti begin!
Tag! You’re it!