Wednesday, July 18, 2012

My Solipsistic Confession

Before many routine business meetings begin, there is usually some idle or humorous chitchat. Certainly it can fill the time needed to wait for important latecomers. But it probably has a more fundamental social function of putting everyone at ease, of establishing some personal connections. Maybe your lizard brain even gets involved by using it as a test to separate friend from foe, prey from predator.

At a meeting I went to yesterday afternoon, our preliminary chitchat suddenly and surprisingly focused on the topic of typing. SK started it off by saying that he wished that he could use his thumbs and pinky fingers while typing and that he was trying to retrain his brain and fingers to do so. I mentioned that a good friend of mine, a mutual acquaintance of the other two guys in the meeting, could type at light speed with only two fingers, and that it was quite a sight to see him go at it. BC sheepishly laughed and said that he had his wife type out important documents for him, not because he is sexist but because he can’t type at all. I said, ah, yes, the hunt and peck method. Then I said, I use all 10 fingers and never look at the keyboard. It’s the unexpected consequence of being forced to take a typing class back in junior high. I hated it then, thought it was unfair and stupid. Turns out that I learned an extremely valuable skill! SK then said, now smart phones are changing everything. Texting is usually done only with your thumbs, and virtual keyboards on some phones are so small that you can only use one finger at a time anyway. And we old-timers all had a good laugh at “those kids today.”

But the entire skit (and I am recalling it as a sort of comedic skit that we scripted out in advance) got me thinking about a topic that I often ponder: communication, and in this particular case, how technology is changing it. This afternoon I read an online discussion about whether personal blogs were a dying art (I don’t think they are; a topic for another time) and decided that was motivation enough to write this post.

So I proceeded to start another rant about the shallow, solipsistic, and derivative nature of FaceBook and Twitter, about the apparent inability of many people to sustain attention or even comprehension beyond 140 characters. I spun off into a related rant about how communication with virtual people belies a basic need of the social animal that we are to look our friends in the eye, see them, smell them, hear them. How else can we truly tell friend from foe?

Then I realized that I am as much a virtual entity to some of the whopping ten or so regular readers of CircusK9 as your FaceBook “friends” might be. I don’t pretend to be your friend but then again, I do sort of hope that you read my posts. In my desire to be read maybe I’m not that much different than someone who uses FaceBook to post repeatedly “look at me gazing at my navel.”

Except that I know how to touch-type using all 10 fingers and I always use more than 140 characters.

1 comment:

BC Insanity said...

I like blogs and don't really think they are going anywhere either. Where else could one go on and on and on about something that gnaws at them? Right? No character limit there. But they are just a 'one-way' communication, despite the comment option.

Just like you few years back, I was much against facebook. Who needs it, useless? Well because of UTB promo page, I joined.
And I have to say it has opened up a connection to many people that I would otherwise barely hear from, old 'real-life' friends, met knew ones who became friends that I get to meet up once in a while with and have proven to be the 'real deal'.
Today we keep in touch, enjoy each others successes and support each others in more stressful times. We get to see pups and kids grow and succeed as we share photos and videos; not the token Christmas family photo gratuitously sent once a year to everyone in one's address book. This is the next best thing to staying in touch and being part of friend's life that the scarce cross country trips and phone calls wouldn't cut. Photo and video sharing and being able to laugh together makes it more personal than emails and photo attachments.
Sure there are always many striving for attention, whiners and such. It's an easy fix though - ignore. Just because it's there no one is forcing me to endure it. Just as there are countless useless blogs around on the web, youtube videos and such. I choose to ignore.
I take the good that facebook offers and enjoy it and am quite fine at leaving the ugly be out there.
No I am not promoting it, but I have to admit it is something else.

G