Steve Stroh pointed me to a John Perry Barlow piece (that's Barlow, at right, from his blog) illustrating the power of the medium as few stories can.
It seems that Barlow was recently jolted by a random Skype phone call from Vietnam. He got to know the caller well because she shared a wireless broadband connection with some neighbors. Thus he was able to talk with her, see her work, see her photos, to learn all about her, without leaving his desk in New York. Then he got a similar call from China, and later one from Australia.
Here's the bottom line:
One doesn't get random phone calls from Viet Nam or China, or at least one never could before.Skype changes all that. Now anybody can talk to anybody, anywhere. At zero cost. This changes everything. When we can talk, really talk, to one another, we can connect at the heart.
And there's more after the break.
The potential of establishing a real emotional connection is exponentially advantaged. And I honestly don't think it would have been any different had they been guys. In the days since, I've received another random call from a guy in Australia. We talked, very entertainingly, for awhile. I'm glad to know him too. (He wasn't trying to practice his English. He actually seems to prefer his version. He was just doing it because he could.)
And then there is the mysterious imprimatur of coincidence. This had never happened to me before and then it happened twice in a single night with two Asian girls who are within days of being the same age as my eldest daughter. (In fact, Dung Vu is three days younger than Leah.) Somehow this seems too weird not to have been meaningful. (Though this belief could be another symptom of my well-established apophenia.)
Anyway, I feel as if the Global Village became real to me that night, and, indeed, it has become the Global Dinner Party. All at once. The small world has become the intimate world.
I'm beginning to think this Internet thing may turn out to be emotionally important after all.
Especially when it's broadband.
One wonders whether Barlow ever answers his regular phone. Every day, I talk with people from all over the world who know my address, my dog's name, the kind of cars I drive, and the stuff I like to shop for. They do their best to have American sounding names and American sounding accents. And it's all about me. How are random callers from Skype any improvement?
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