I was just thinking what a splendid experience DAR and Feelies are. I was trying to explain to my wife about this community. How smart they were. How the collective knowledge was so much greater than that of any one. How it pursued truth and decency and tolerance, while telling dirty jokes and playing ridiculous games. The only group of hyperintelligent women I have ever associated with, but funny and generous and strangely attractive and playful. The only group of intelligent women who neither shrunk from asserting themselves nor from being civilized and generous.
I see a vision of the future in which self-selected friends exchange conversations in which all can share and participate as they will, or withdraw two by two into alcoves for more intimate chats or conspiracies. I feel like an 18th century gentleman, in deshabille, some snuff stains on my tatty coat, released temporarily from the Bastille to live out his years on the ruins of his ancient estate, invited by chance to the Salon of Madame Rambi, to meet world travelers and scholars, exchange a few aphorisms with an abbe' or Ben Franklin (who might drop by). Of course, we are drawing rapidly to the end of this age. Videoconferencing is just around the corner. No more posting in our underwear. Have to shave and brush our hair. Having to look at people who now we can only imagine and idealize. Rambi and the girls in their thongs == hmmm -- the painful lash across our shoulders and our ---- . We will remember these as the golden years of the Internet. The lucky ones will look back and remember the pleasure it brought to them, and to others who no longer post. |
