Up again at 5 AM-ish today, I strolled the park with my greyhound in the dark. The title of an item on http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1203 ... "Would you rather get news, information and companionship from the Internet, or from friends face to face?" and the air that time of the morning are exactly what I needed to start the day.
During hurricane Ivan and for about 3 weeks, we did not have electricity, gas, water, and telephone (not cell, voip, nor PSTN) in our home nor my company's headquarters. Everything my company provides (DIDX aka DIDXchange, consumer and SMB call forward management, and event promotion) is hosted, and we exist in our offices across 4-5 countries depending upon where any of us are working at one time. So, the customers were still being served while I was forced into a sabbatical.
What did we get out of the disaster? My neighbors and I sat together late into the night, talking on our front porches in our middle class neighborhood where such a thing would have seemed uncouth before Ivan. We shared our thawed (never to be frozen again) meat, wine, batteries and music. We walked 6 miles just to visit one of our friends we were worried about.
What was I really missing? Information. I won't lie. I would be talking with friends and family. Someone would pose a question. We heard guesses and declared facts, but I wanted to know more. More, more. "I go look it up on the Internet," was something I said so many times and realized, I can't. Would I rather get news, information and companionship from the Internet, or from friends face to face?
I like both equally. Read The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster.
Hey, I was using Safari browser on my husband's Mac this morning, and I notice something for the first time. I couldn't do my blog post in HTML with it. It felt weird. (Fixed as soon as I got on my Dell.)
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