It's been a while since I was last here. How many of you missed me? OK, wrong question, I was being a tad optimistic... Sarcastic answers notwithstanding, (why don't you put them in the comments section - I'm quite bored honestly, and could use some entertainment) here's why I've chosen to occupy a few more kilobytes in the blogger.com servers.
As I'm sure you'd have noticed, Google launched yet another service, aimed at making us incapable of communication beyond 20 odd words - Buzz. They haven't actually said that it resembles Twitter, (that 160 character marvel that seems to be the by-word for the socially-urbane folk today) but it's quite obvious that they hope to steal some of its thunder. Not too mention that of Facebook, (though how much is questionable, given the lack of easy access to visual stimulus - something that most guys love looking at, for reasons best left unsaid) Flickr, and a whole host of other services I really couldn't care less about. As far as I'm concerned, anything that encourages us to communicate using lesser words and with more (read random) people is something to be avoided like the plague. I'm not saying that Google Buzz will end up being as degenerate as some of the other "social" networking websites, but I'm not too optimistic. I hope that I end up liking it, because it sure as hell can be an excellent past-time.
However, there's a bigger question here. Has the world moved on from means of communication where you actually need to write something (as opposed to looking like you're training to be the world's most reticent Trappist monk) to forms where any bit of extraneous information is a bit too much, and things like "liked blah blah movie, so-and-so person hot, direction OK, story sucks" actually sound verbose? Even E-mail, something that was considered rude, curt, and overly business-like not so long ago, seems like verbal extravagance. I shudder to think what we're going to come up next. Maybe it'll be a form of gesture recognition. Wave once, and you're hungry. Wave twice, and you want to go see a movie, apart from eating dinner. Wave thrice, and... well, you get the point. We're going to be reduced to using gorilla-communication techniques in the not-so-distant future, unless we're careful. I bet Darwin would have a hard time explaining that.
Granted, there are some merits to the new social network, but I really don't think that "likes" and "pokes" fall under this category. Call me an old-fashioned fool, but I genuinely believe that friends ought to mean something more than the odd comment on a wall/homepage/whatever. If you consider someone to be your friend, spend at least a few minutes writing something that doesn't look like a newspaper headline. But then again, what the hell do I know?
temple by the sea
15 years ago
