Reconnection
Suffering from a sense of disconnection is one thing but actually being out of the digital loop is proving to be very awkward. As you may know, I’ve just moved to Dublin where I have only a few contacts, all of whom live some distance away. But the geographical disconnect hasn’t really bothered me too much because, until now at least, working freelance and from my home office, I have often gone days with my only communications being wrapped up in network protocols. So to be without a personal internet connection has been surprisingly frustrating. I’m aware that my class mates are actively pushing their lifestreams up onto the web but I haven’t been able to do the same. Ok so that’s sorted out now and I have a mobile broadband dongle thingie, flakey as it is. But the downtime has given me pause for thought. With so much of our social, business, political and practical interactions moving into the digital realm, to be disconnected for any length of time, or Tim help us, permanently, is becoming nothing short of cultural exclusion. Kevin raises a similar point in relation to the Hand chapter from this weeks reading, check it out. Plus I’ve just finished the Bell chapter and find echos of the same theme there… its interesting and important that we should preface the module with these ideas, because it would be all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking “always on” means “everyone always on”.