Dec
01

So this is an IM conversation I had with Matt yesterday:

Matthew: you have gone quiet
Angel: Oh, I was replying to a comment someone left in my LJ. That’s what I needed the anchor tag information for.
Matthew: what did they say
Matthew: which entry was it fo
Matthew: for
Angel: This entry
Session Close (Matthew): Tue Nov 30 09:20:22 2004

Session Start (atwoodings@hotmail.com:Matthew): Tue Nov 30 09:30:02 2004
Matthew: sorry, madness with phones … but you know what that’s like 😀 That’s some cool entries. Your voice is being heard
Matthew: … and it was a cool entry also
Angel: No, prezzey wasn’t a random surfer. She’s a friend of amawahibiki‘s.
Matthew: ah ok, but still its cool
Angel: We’ve added each other to our friends’ list. I read her LJ and she reads mine. We got a liking for each other because we are both geek girls. She met Daniel through the online Jewish community — she’s Jewish too.
Matthew: I think thats very cool. I think the Internet is great for making the world a smaller more accessible place
Angel: I definitely agree. I have a Hungarian and an Israeli as penpals. I don’t think that would have happened without the internet.
Matthew: the chances of that happening would be really low unless you requested to have a hungarian pen pal and a Israeli pen pal
Angel: Heh heh… I don’t think I would have chosen Hungarian and Israeli. I met these two people through mutual interest. They just happened to be Hungarian and Israeli.
Matthew: thats what I mean, before the internet flourished you would have had to specify the origin of the pen pal, now they find you 🙂
Angel: It is fun. But you and I use the internet totally differently. I’m much more social, and you use it much more as a tool…. hmmmm, a lot like how we played EQ differently.
Matthew: yep, a lot of kids today use the Internet much how you do, as a social gathering place and a central place of contact where you are correct, I use it as a tool
Angel: I wonder why we are so different like that. It was obvious in EQ too.
Matthew: I don’t know … but its interesting that the internet is used in so many different ways

Internet relationships remind me of Life — that old math “game” where stable cells were created or destroyed depending on where you added additional cells. LJ (the entire site) has obviously created a very large and stable cell. And smaller cells are created by mutual interest. They are not always stable though. I had a net friend from Singapore who I met through a mutual interest in aquariums, but we don’t talk much anymore. His life is very busy at the moment, and he has many net friends. So that cell has collapsed.

Twenty years ago, I would’ve had to specify the location of penpals, and I don’t think I would have chosen Hungary or Israel. I would have chosen England or Australia probably. It wouldn’t even have occured to me choose a non-English speaking country. So, entirely due to the internet and relationships forged through mutual interests, I’m learning about countries that I would have never learned about before.

I keep phoning Matt for html and CSS help. I’m going to have to learn html all over again… just like I had to learn IRC all over again after I hadn’t used it in five years. Technology keeps chugging forward, with or without me. 🙂

Oh, and I switched to Trillian. I was sick of stinkin’ Yahoo hijacking my computer. And my father-in-law switched to MSN from Yahoo for the same reason. I wonder how many users Yahoo lost after that last awful version. Trillian rocks, by the way. There are only two problems with it: it doesn’t support the MSN cam and it doesn’t support voice. But, even without those features, it still rocks.



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