Connected

[bloodyrosemccoy]

Just friended my heroic buddy Joseph on Facebook. He looked through my profile, checked out my pictures, and sent me a message cheerfully declaring that “true now day you fat as pig ,also you look beautiful.”

Ah, the brutal forthrightness of the deaf.

Anyway, I’ve been looking around for a few friends I’ve lost touch with because of, y’know, geography, like Tito and Gachoki and Ann Marie. And I gotta say, every once in a while it blows me away how cool technology is. People say we take technology for granted now, but I must admit I have been known to pause and think, “Dude! I am talking with someone on the other side of the planet right now!” I do it all the time, and it’s still incredible.

Okay, we may not have flying cars, but I am still having a swell time here in The Future.

Comments

[fenmere.livejournal.com]

Not to say the least of occasionally having a very public and positive interaction with a role model or hero, such as tmcm or ursulav (or making a fool of oneself on their forum for all to see), on the very same day you receive correspondence with an Iranian student protester running from the police.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I absolutley love the Polynesian princess with her boar familiar. That's the one I plan to get.

(My roommate and I also had a print of Blackbeard's Tampons on our bathroom door back in college.)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I know! I really like how very accessible people are online--hell, I'm friends with NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON on Facebook, and I have a writers' group in Eugene I can still ask for advice, and I can make suggestions to politicians, all before breakfast!

And I don't know how people got by without a giant reference section right on their desks.

The world really is at your fingertips, and it is awesome.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

what?! Neil Degrasse Tyson is on facebook?! Must tell my bf about this. I don't suppose he has a blog, too...

[cougarfang.livejournal.com]

but I must admit I have been known to pause and think, “Dude! I am talking with someone on the other side of the planet right now!” I do it all the time, and it’s still incredible.

Having lived on the other side of the planet and attempted to RP in realtime with people in this country, it was somewhat less incredible and more aaaaargh I have school in the morning...

But I had sort of a modified version of that moment, marveling at language itself when I found myself playing Telephone for an LJ Saiyuki comm: I was translating, from Chinese to English, a story by the Saiyuki mangaka that some random person in Asia had translated from the original Japanese to Chinese, and I was posting my English translation for umpteen English-speaking fans to read. And the mangaka didn't know the Chinese translator at all, just as the Chinese translator didn't know me, out of the billions of people alive, and yet still the story was being passed along more or less intact across these branching lines. Holy shit!

[viizou.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm sometimes struck with the realization of how awesome it is that I can talk to my parents "face-to-face" through Skype, when they live on the other side of the ocean. I mean, I still remember watching that episode of The Simpsons that takes place in "the future", where they have videophones, and thinking "Yeah, that'd really be cool..."

This reminds me of an article I was sent a week ago: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8117619.stm

It's not quite on the level of international communication, but the mp3 player was a revolution of its own, as well.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

:) The future totally rocks. Psychotropic medication, teh interwebz, and hot showers. Amazing.