Every moment's a little bit later

After doing what has become to be my morning routine of political news, blog checks, email sweep and thesis musings, I began to notice how rapidly I was being hurtled through the Internet. Link hopping, tab-opening, bookmarking and intermittently shooting off emails to people I thought would be interested in the Internet gems I'd collected along the way.

The web-world has changed our lives so comprehensively, yet because it has all happened so fast, most of us haven't noticed how comprehensively it has changed human interaction. Those who do notice go in many different directions with their observation; some revolt and refuse to join facebook, myspace, twitter, etc. and insist on keeping their outdated nokia; some sprinkle their lives with text messages, facebook pokes and youtube videos; and then there are those who thrive on it and use the growing phenomenon to their advantage.

There are certainly more gradations of web-obsession/apathy, but these are the typical ones I've found in Boulder. I like to see myself somewhere in between the first two: the girl who joined the social communities but never really uses them, who texts messages but will not allow a string longer than two responses to transpire, who blogs but doesn't rely on it as her sense of community, etc.

The reason I am in the grey section of tech-obsession is for many reasons, but chief among them is that I believe the most sensible ideas are swimming amidst the middle-ground of the extremes. I believe in balance.

Those who revolt are losing out because one must adapt, to a certain degree, in order to compete.

Those who blogtwitpoketextsendetc and rely upon the direction technology is going in are often unwittingly socially distant from real world interaction. The reason I want to emphasize the fact that the latter group is generally unconsciously "distant" from the "real world" is that I think these people are caught up.

>interlude of definitions<

Distant: unaware. (I will expound upon this later)

Real World: a hug or conversation that isn't contingent in any way upon anything besides that instant of human interaction

>end of interlude<

One may be able to know what is going on in all corners of their city, state, country and world through twitter messages, RSS feeds and bulletins, but how deep will these things impact the person if said person is merely skimming through due to the profusion of information coming at him/her? I am not denying that staying informed is important, but I think some people are taking it too far. I will not point any fingers, but some of these Internet social networking schemes are starting to irritate me so much that I am blogging against bloggers right now... oh shit... hypocrite or unhinged?

The distance I see in extreme techies is the idea that maybe they think they can be machines. A computer can process the amount of information that the common-techie is receiving on a daily basis, and it doesn't matter how much time the computer puts into the data, because computers do not think! The difference between man and machine is that we are given the ability to mentally process, actively form and connect ideas, in a time-consuming manner. It takes time for humans to fully process things, and that is okay. In this technologically spiraling world, we need to stay human, be more aware and thoughtful, instead of thinking we can cyborg ourselves to try and become as functional as machines.

Be aware. Notice your breath or your heart beat shift as you go to give a hug. Sometimes I feel like people are becoming more in tune with the hum of their vibrating blackberry than they are to the cadence of the human heart beat.

This brings me back to the Wilco quote I have as today's label: Every moment's a little bit later. The way I interpret this line is through hippie-kumbaya colored glasses: take each moment for what it is, at the size it is - don't try to overload your moments. Live in a comfortable pulse; think drizzle rain windshield wiper blades, not downpour mode.

I am really into balance lately. Balance. Just say it, it is such a calming word.