The Conversation
Dear Kara,
I think I'll decline your offer to predict the future, and instead head in
another direction for my last Breakfast Table entry. (Or is it the Dinner Table
by this time of day?) Did you see the story buried (alas) in the "Circuits"
section of the New York Times today by Katie Hafner? It was a
thoughtful, beautifully written meditation on the differences between a
real-life community and a virtual community--a meditation provoked by the death
of her father, who lived in Williamsburg, Mass., right up the road from me.
"The week I spent in Williamsburg just after the crash"--her father was
killed when the small plane he was piloting crashed--"was a blur," she writes.
"But what did stay in sharp focus were the faces and voices of the people who
came to the door or stopped me on the street to tell me they had known my
father. They knew his comings and goings, his eccentricities. They had been to
his house for dinner and heard his stories ... They had argued with him at town
meetings and read the letters he sent to the local paper."
She goes on to compare this community to the virtual communities, such as
the Well, that have sprung up on the Internet--and about which she herself has
written admiringly. "In the course of writing about the Well," she says, "I saw
people there grieve for their fellow members when they died and marshal support
in an emergency. I saw intense commitment to community ... But my experience in
Williamsburg was of a different order, and it convinced me that the real and
virtual communities are fundamentally different." Ultimately, she concludes,
the real community is more cohesive. It works better.
On some level, I feel the same way about the exercise we've just concluded.
It's been a lot of fun; it's been thought-provoking; and I feel as though I've
gotten to know you a little bit. But no more than a little bit--and therefore
it's not completely satisfying. Wouldn't it be more fun, and more
thought-provoking to talk about the things we've been e-mailing each
other about? Wouldn't you prefer to see the face and hear the voice? I
would--any day. Now that we've had these exchanges, I want to get rid of the
technology and talk to you in person. So the next time I'm in Silicon Valley,
I'll give you a call and maybe we can have a beer.
No, I won't e-mail ahead of time. I still prefer the telephone. Old habits
die hard.
