what follows is commentary on an email i recieved in response to a post on my other blog. text quoted from the response email is in pink...
Ahhhh….ummm….oh, sea horses in a bag, freeze dried…not good. They are so cute and so much better alive and swimming. Of all the things to eat, do they have to eat sea horses?.....although, their food is so pretty, so alive and colorful looking. Makes our dull American cuisine look rather pale and unappetizing.
[the following is an editorial comment on the subject, not intended as a personal disagreement with the person who inspired the commentary]
if you use twitter, i've been sending tweets from my phone. follow me! ok I give up. I don't get why we needed this? wasn't texting and computering enough? How many more ways do people need to do the same thing? Please explain why tweeting/twitter is now being all the rage…..i don't get it. there is a movie out there called, "He's just not that into you". In one preview, Drew Barrymore says "There are 7 kinds of technology to be rejected by now days, I just can't take it"…I cracked up at that. I don't know if I am repeating myself but they are finding out via studies that kids now days are having trouble 'connecting' with other human beings due to their constant attachment to high tech gadgets….texting, cell phoning, twittering, no one is getting any eye contact. No one is connecting on any humane level, no empathy can flourish this way making violence and killing that much easier, not having that human connection. Someone sitting in a room with you, texting, listening to their Ipod, twittering…and no one is actually really interested in what you are having to say. So many ways to communicate and yet the most important way of all is being forgotten…that being talk, touch, and connection
ah, twitter - "why do we need this?", well why not? to people like you and i, who grew up in the "talking face to face" era don't get it.
no one is getting any eye contact. No one is connecting on any humane level, no empathy can flourish this way making violence and killing that much easier, not having that human connection.
that's how us "old farts" see it. sounds so much like my dad, who has asked us a thousand times "what's an iPod, what's MP3?" and no matter what we tell him he always says "what's wrong with silence? why not just sit down and talk to someone? why have music music music in your ears all the time? when do you have time to think?". this from someone whose musical tastes stopped evolving when Lawrence welk died (that's an exaggeration)
for people like us, who have no or few friends, the twitterverse seems stupid. but to millions of ah, hum, younger people out there, they have a huge extended network of friends, many of them only visible online because they are separated by distance. when i was a kid, i could only have buddies who lived within blocks of me. there was no other way to interact. there was no 'call waiting' so if i was on the phone, and my dad was trying to call my mom and tell her there was a military alert and he wasn't coming home for a few days, all he got was a busy signal, so my phone calls were limited to 5 MINUTES.
yeah, people now have 7 different kinds of technology "to be rejected with". but that's blaming the message medium for the message. -rejection is only ONE kind of message among the thousands of others that gets sent across those technologies.
and to be told: ...No one is connecting on any humane level, no empathy can flourish this way making violence and killing that much easier...
is just bullshit being spewed out by more old farts who 'don't get it' i see it as the modern version of "rock and roll is devils music and is destroying our youth" don't the many emails you send out about wolf killings, wild cat havens, recycling, and the others people have about environment, Darfur refugees, land-mines; "connect on a human level"? don't they generate empathy? would you even know about sarah palins wolf killing spree if it wasn't for one of those "7 different technologies"? and if you did find out, it would likely be after the fact. and how in the world they can claim this makes killing and violence that much easier? that has always astounded me. yes, they can always dig up the few people who played Grand Theft Auto all day and then went and shot someone cause it was just like in the game. yeah, and dan white shot harvey milk because he was high on twinkies.
but, back to twitter. can you remember, when you were a teen ager especially, that you would call up one of your friends and say "hey, what are you doin?" that's what twitter is. if you have friends, it's interesting. if you don't, you can make friends and follow them around.
go have a look at http://twittervision.com/
and tell me you have "no connection on a human level" to anything anybody across the WORLD says in a tweet.
the really cool thing that everybody forgets is that like the OFF button on a TV, you don't HAVE to be involved, don't have to tweet, don't have to use all 7 technologies. choose the ones you like and understand. everybody else will go on with the rest.
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