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Reader Feedback on "What Light Through Yonder Inbox Breaks? — The Romance of Low Bandwidth"
My lover and I reconnected through classmates.com and corresponded by email for several weeks before actually speaking on the phone, then later meeting face to face. A kiss in the parking lot, then fireworks. The original intent of the emails was nothing more than a "hi, what are you up to?" Emails release all kinds of emotions. So what to do with these exchanges, asks an earlier post? We each have a set of our printed emails, handsomely bound by Kinko's, and quite hidden from our respective spouses.
--EL
10/07 |
The anonymity of online communication makes things simultaneously more candid and more fake & removed. You meet the neurotic or silly or stupid wordplay, most of the time, and leaving an average American to the task of communicating with words is not something I want to do. I've been to college. But then, people still go to chatrooms and pretend the umpteenth accidental double entendre is the funniest thing...yuck. In a country of cowards and voyeurs, the Net works fabulously for romance. Hey, if you never knew better and you're a wretched person to talk to in person, go for it and use some filter to find a warm body with equal levels of desperation for commitment. I am optimistic about many things, but not internet relationships as a medium. Long-distance relationships as it is have the foulest reputation, but here we are acting cute about technology as if everyone should have LDRs just for modernity. I can see that as an intellectual it is really unhip to categorically condemn the hottest new thing, like the Net, but I'm gonna say it: Feh. Disclaimer: I'm not a Luddite -- random Americans, organized by hobby (YUCK), trying to write eloquently; NO THANKS!
--an
08/20 |
I think, though, that the popular dichotomy between being online and being with people is misleading ... the point of this article was that the internet is being driven by peoples desire to communicate with each other. There are obvious disadvantages to interacting online (no touch, fewer levels of communication), but in some ways e-mail and chat can be more candid and cerebral than face to face interaction ... Rufus
--rkg
08/06 |
I think that the comments made are correct. However, the whole point of existence is not merely to be successful, rich, or well known. The true joy in life comes from the people you meet, and what you learn from them. All of us as children want to grow up to have nice cars, large homes, and big paychecks. But as I have grown older, I have come to the conclusion that the things I have acquired and learned (including my computer) will not be the things I remember when I am old and gray, talking to my grand-kids. It will be my interactions with people. No amount of technology can replace the need for real human contact. I probably will not remember many of the things I have learned from the internet, but I will remember kids I went to school with, skipping class to go to the lake, college parties, staying out late at a club, and hanging out at the coffee shop watching a new band. I don't think computers or the internet will ever be able to completely eradicate the need to be around people. Let's face it, sometimes you just want to be with someone, face to face, skin to skin. Even with the advancements made every day, nothing will ever be able to replace just getting out and doing it.
--jdt
08/04 |
great story you are right!!! i just found this sight saw your story on the t.v. i have my own web-site its called ghost-hunter.com. check it out maybe you guys can do a nude ghosthunt or something. rasjr@aol.com
--ras
08/03 |
Hello
Just thought I'd send you a note on your latest editorial
comment. As always articulate and witty. Couldnt agree with you more.
Thank-you
--kh
08/02 |
A marvelous article, and very perceptive. Having participated in the online world of romance, I agree wholeheartedly with your observations. The future of romance may well lie in the electronic domain. Interestingly, my current lover and I, although we met through non-electronic means, did spend the first year of our relationship corresponding by email. I now have, carefully preserved in a folder in my email program, an extraordinary collection of the 150 emails we exchanged before we started living together. I'm now faced with the difficult question of what to do with them. In less technological times, love letters would be carefully collected in an old shoe-box and lovingly tied up with a piece of ribbon. I'm not particularly optimistic that Micrsoft Outlook Express will still be around in 50 years when I go searching for our precious romantic literary legacy. I've considered dumping them to CD-ROM (perhaps with a nice printed label); I've considered getting somebody to write them to DVD-ROM for me. Interestingly, I'm not even sure that printing them out will do it. I know I've seen 10 year-old printouts where the binder has decayed to the point that letters fall off the paper if you shake too hard. Hmmmm. Technology can be very inconvenient sometimes.
--rm
08/01 |
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