opinions, anyone?
I recently read this in Slate, and thought that Mr. Kinsley, Internet Pioneer, might potentially be missing the point. No, I don't want to know what Doug is doing, and no, I don't much care to create my own MySpace page and use it to communicate with a million and a half teenagers. (I am Old New Media; I've e-mailed since I was old enough to flirt with boys, but I was three years before the explosion of IMing.) So far, I'm with him. But my blog is a means of communicating with Old Old Media friends (people I met and became friends with in the flesh), much as is my cell phone family plan empire. I have (barely) refrained from posting my LSAT score or my c.v.
In other words, it's not about me, precisely. It's the equivalent of a mass e-mail, with enhanced chatting ability. Not that I object if the occasional stranger reads it, but one of the charms of the Internet is not its anonymity, but its size. Who could find it without being given the URL? Poor Doug, whose questionable grammar is now being criticized by the entire readership of Slate, never intended to inform the world of what Doug is doing. He says himself that, "if you are
reading this you are probably either a Friend or Family."
And the rest of the world is doing the same thing--reaching out to old friends, or potential friends. Making connections. Keeping in touch. This isn't solipsism, it's a way of bringing us back to each other. The profiles and self-descriptions Kinsley condemns are distinguishing marks, intended to catch and keep the reader by invoking the writer's individuality. There's less of that here, as I assume you know who I am and what I look like. But where's the harm? It's no wonder that the huge networking sites are filled with teenagers, all anticipating or in the midst of being shuffled from school to school or from school to college. If they keep their high school friends closer than I kept mine, then bless MySpace and all its imitators. I suppose it's natural that Mr. Kinsley thinks of the internet as a broadcast medium, but for most of us, it acts more like a group of friends in a restaurant, a private conversation in a public arena.
In other words, it's not about me, precisely. It's the equivalent of a mass e-mail, with enhanced chatting ability. Not that I object if the occasional stranger reads it, but one of the charms of the Internet is not its anonymity, but its size. Who could find it without being given the URL? Poor Doug, whose questionable grammar is now being criticized by the entire readership of Slate, never intended to inform the world of what Doug is doing. He says himself that, "if you are
reading this you are probably either a Friend or Family."
And the rest of the world is doing the same thing--reaching out to old friends, or potential friends. Making connections. Keeping in touch. This isn't solipsism, it's a way of bringing us back to each other. The profiles and self-descriptions Kinsley condemns are distinguishing marks, intended to catch and keep the reader by invoking the writer's individuality. There's less of that here, as I assume you know who I am and what I look like. But where's the harm? It's no wonder that the huge networking sites are filled with teenagers, all anticipating or in the midst of being shuffled from school to school or from school to college. If they keep their high school friends closer than I kept mine, then bless MySpace and all its imitators. I suppose it's natural that Mr. Kinsley thinks of the internet as a broadcast medium, but for most of us, it acts more like a group of friends in a restaurant, a private conversation in a public arena.
posted by sophie at 11:58
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home