Webmen
One of my previous posts was about our Loneliness in the Space. Let’s look at another feeling of loneliness - our personal loneliness inside our world and how it was changed last years.
About 11 years ago I saw the Internet at the first time. It was a strange feeling. Feeling that you can connect to everything that is exists in our world. Do you want visit some site in Australia? Or in South America ? Or in China ? You have the whole world in your hands!
In 1999 I bought my first modem. I don’t remember exact date but I remember that this day was a holiday for me. The modem was internal ISA Eline 33600. Without switches and without indicators. It looked like sound or video card but the power that was in this device was the same with some magical artefact like this:
Palantir
The first months I used it for connecting to BBS. It was a happy period in my life - nights with downloading new software and even music and uploading to increase my rating on BBSs in my city to be available to download more. While one of these processes was going I slept for some minutes. I set my alarm clock to wake up me in 15-30 minutes to launch next downloading/uploading process. While BBS line was busy and I can’t connect to it I slept for some time too but listened the rattle of modem life - my phone line was in pulse dialing and every ring made a lot of noise in my room. I had red eyes every morning =)
Later became FidoNet for me. T-Mail tool could work in automatic mode. There wasn’t a need to launch every transmitting process - I could do it in the evening and at the morning I got what I need. But there was the same trouble with BBS - the most of nodes had only one phone line and about 20-30 users who used that line. In FidoNet with often connections to node made illusion of some live discussion. There wasn’t feeling that people answer you in 15 minutes or even several days. When I read my netmail and echomail it was like I talk with people right now. When I saw their answers I could see my previous posts like I have written them 30 seconds ago.
At the same period I got my first own internet dialup account. There was the same problem with BBS and FidoNet - a lot of users and very few phone lines. But it was also expensive enough! Every hour cost about $0.5-0.75 and it was possible to download about 5-6 MBytes in an hour. ICQ was like exotic tool. I was online about 1 hour every day and this was only period when I was online in ICQ. I had about 5 friends in my contact list and when somebody became online too it looked like meeting the person in Space.
The most part of the day computer was offline. In the evening became period of working BBSs and Fidonet’s nodes and the room was filled voices, people, laughing, crying and so on. Walking through Internet was looked like diving alone in a deep of information. T-Mail had feature to chat while it transmits files from one side to another. Sometimes we used this feature for chatting - we sent to each other some large files to create constant connection between our computers.
This situation was going for several years while became GPRS connection with ability of spend money on downloading traffic but not for using some line for some period of time. ICQ icon became green for the most part of the day. And it was a key point of using nets - now you will be online everytime you used your computer. People become chatting instead of calling to each other or even meeting. We can now even watch movies in different locations - everybody sits at home and watch the same movie that was started at one moment by everyone and everybody can discuss actions in movie in real-time in chat!
It was about 5-7 years ago and this situation was change the feeling of people communcations. Now all of us use IM (ICQ, Jabber, AIM and so on), Skype give us video chat. It is available not only on your computer it is available in the most places where you have been on your phone. You are constantly feel your own RJ45 connector which connect you to collective intelligence to some large meeting room to some pub with your friends. Do you remember when you feel lonelyness last time? I think it is impossible to feel it in the modern life - everytime you are surrounded by all your friends and family. I have friends who live in another cities and who I see about 1-2 times in a year but I can’t feel that I miss them because we chat every day. And I have friends with whom I meet every 1-2 weeks but we don’t chatting. I feel that I “see” friends with whom I chat every day more often =) It is wonderfully but it is so. I “talk” with my friends and customers who can be on another continent at that moment and there is no difference where they are. It could be say that everybody who you can see in your contact list is like the people with whom you are placed in one room. People from your email address book are from the next room. And people who in Real World sitting near you look like they placed in the building near yours!
When I worked at night at the computer about 10-12 years ago I felt the whole loneliness. There wasn’t anybody in the world around me. But now it is very difficult to get the same feeling. When appear some troubles with the Internet connection I feel the shadow of this loneliness. Internet changed our lives and now when it is an ordinary thing in our life when I try to think about it more detaily it is still wonder me. It give us the sixth sence - something the same with telepathy but it steal some part of our soul instead - it chain us to our meeting room and when we want go to the WC to feel loneliness for 5 minutes it provides toilet sink for us right in this room. Do you disagree with me? Try to switch off your phone and disable your Internet connection for several hours and you can hear shadow of loneliness..