It is the artificial Tuscan village. It is my hometown in California where I grew up population 10,000, high school enrollment 600. We knew everybody. People dropped in and if they didn't they saw you on the street anyway.
In "Passage to India," the author E.M. Forster says "only connect."
But like facebook a blog is connection lite. And any sound like the word love or death or hate bounces around as it does in the caves at Marabar and comes back an echo: boum, ou-boum.
What can compare with the look in a lover's eyes when she gets you, truly understands you and likes what she understands? What can compare with the lively glance from your friend over a glass of wine and a backgammon board?
Not blog. Not face book.
I now invent a new social network. It is called face. You cannot join until you are here, looking me in the eye, smelling my sweat, watching me move however slowly in real time, moves that disappear like flashes of light on ocean waves, never to be seen again.
Friendo, if I could "friend" someone in Uganda that might be something. But do I want anyone in Uganda to know of both our common humanity and the equally common disparity between the $3 a day he and his fa
ily live in and the $3 I just paid because I was a few days late returning a DVD to the library?
You want a technology that will change the world? Watch out what you wish for.
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