Nooj

Between my shadow and my soul

Click click living

Inspiration for this post: I met a girl today at a Sanzaf meeting. We started chatting and realized not only that we had loads in common, we had many of the same social circles as well. As I was saving her number on my phone, an error message came up, I already had her number!!

Without having ever met her before. One of my friends must've suggested I call her up for something. This made me start thinking about how the six degrees of seperation has been dramatically decreased to only maybe one or two. Most of the people reading this have friends common with me on facebook running into the double digits. What does this mean for life as we know/knew it?

Another scenario: a friend sends out an email asking people for support at work. Somehow through repeated "forwards" and totally unintentionally, it ends up at her boss. Information is no longer sacrosanct. Technology has made the getting to know people game much easier, and much much more slippery. A friend in his late 30s tells me that the "apartheid generation" would flip at this. In those days you were hectically paranoid about your movements because of Informers.

At the same time, think about the advantages of blogging, euphemistically sometimes called citizen journalism. We get to hear stories from people on the ground living in communities instead of hearing things by word of mouth which has the same effect as playing Chinese Whispers. You can google or wiki EVERYHTING and get some kind of an answer for it. Is there not some beauty in the sharing of humanity in that? Yes people lie on the net, create avatars and citizen communities that are artificial. Does this not happen to some degree in real life as well?

I still believe the internet has more yays than nays. What say you?

12 shared ideas:

Saaleha Idrees Bamjee November 23, 2008 at 7:30 PM  

Indulge me while I dissolve in fluffiness - I would not have met my husband were it not for the interwebs.
Despite having been a year apart at the same high school, living on opposite ends of the same small town, sharing mutual acquaintances; we grew up past each other, walking divergent, each a stranger to the other.
It took a blog, a hyper-link, a sister-in-law who fancied herself a matchmaker and a blog update subscription service for our souls to form a venn diagram.

My dartboard November 23, 2008 at 9:05 PM  

I thought u were going break out into your version of i kissed a girl (and liked it)

Az November 24, 2008 at 12:40 AM  

I did a paper on this earlier this year...the Internet has some-what eroded privacy...which will eventually cease to exist (well to an extent anyway) as everything becomes public knowledge. Britney Spears flashes her bra and we ge tto see it a few minutes later on youtube. Anything and Everything is becoming possible these days.

Come to think of it, its scary actually.

Work in Progress November 24, 2008 at 9:16 AM  

Totally agree that deception is just as prevalent in real life as it is on the internet. But the world has become freakishly small and alot of it is because of the internet...

Edge Of Where November 24, 2008 at 9:27 AM  

So let me say this I cant remeber people that i've met or should I say their names I do recognise their faces and when we end up swapping numbers I realise I had it all along but thats besides the point.... I do beleive that the world has become alot smaller but to me there are much more pro's to have come out of it.

Waseem November 24, 2008 at 11:00 AM  

I say its more nays, esp for kids. I saw a link last week, a teen committed suicide on webcam and was cheered on by others. I tink if i ever have kids they can only use internet with invigilation, until they at least 13, afterwards, i think we should be able to check their history, hopefully they not smart enough to know how to delete history.

I think its important to create an environment of trust thoug so as to prevent this kinda mis beaviour from happening, but what do i know, im not a parent.

Khadija November 24, 2008 at 11:32 AM  

" ...It seems quite commonplace to us that every technology has two sides to its consequences, on the one hand for every technology we develop in an attempt to improve life, we believe we also will on the other hand, find life impoverished in some way. Such has been our experience with a variety of technologies, from nuclear power, with its capacity for generating electricity and for destruction, to the written word, with its capacity for preservation and dissemination of information and for its origination of silent readers. Once we are accustomed to a new technology we accept both sides, preferring, one suspects, to assume that as the technology is refined its negative consequences will also be better engineered."
Steven G Jones, Virtual Culture

Nooj November 25, 2008 at 12:07 AM  

saals- a beautifully unlikely love story- indulges the romantic buried somewhere beneath my cognitive cortex :p but Masha Allah may we all be blessed with such luck and hyperlinks :)

OH- this might seem scary to ur species but chicks love meeting each other :D

Azra- voyeurism does get outta control. when you forget you have a life and start invesing time in someone who doesn't even know u exist!! like the anon phenomenon we had :P

Wip- also thanks to jet planes and ferraris :P

Edge- i've been through that before but this was different. It was like meeting someone you always wanted to know. Not that she's the awesomest person I've met but for me meeting like minded dudettes is the coolest thing ever

Was- would that not have happened without the net anyway? altho i wholeheartedly agree with u on the parental supervision. Little buggers have the nimblst fingers that son't correlate with brain maturity

Kay- wise words as always chosen with the finest care to deliver a gentle message :)

M Junaid November 25, 2008 at 1:37 AM  

http://www.wharnsby.com/

If it wasnt for the internet I would have never met you, or waseem or many other wonderful people. No amount of nays can counter that

Shafinaaz Hassim November 25, 2008 at 6:57 PM  

sometimes its small. sometimes its too small. size matters you know :P

Safiyya November 26, 2008 at 4:54 PM  

I agree with MJ, but sometimes you get unlucky by meeting off-beat people. Luckily so far that hasn't happened for me...

Nooj November 26, 2008 at 10:56 PM  

Mj- well we woulda met at wamy. but well i wouldnt get u as much then

shafs- like a cockroach colony :)

safiyya- hey welcome. you gotta be a bit skeptical its true