Yesterday when we were speaking, you made a reference to the existential question around identity and communication over the internet. Hearing a voice confirms existence. Meeting someone face-to-face further validates such. Email or chatting or leaving a comment on a Web page does no such thing.
But what if we began to look at it the other way? What if a voice or a personal meeting, due the ‘present’ nature of the terms, only validates a temporary existence rather than a permanent one? Where is the record of the conversation you had with your son this morning? While it may confirm your son’s existence to you, and vice-versa, it does little to confirm your son’s existence to me. What does do that? Your son’s Facebook page of course.
This was all inspired from the ‘Quote of the Day’ today in the New York Times:
“That will give me an identity. It will show that I am a human being, that I am alive, that I live on this planet. It will prove I am an Indian.”
Mohammed Jalil, a rickshaw puller in New Delhi, registering by computer into the world’s largest biometric data base, designed to keep official track of India’s 1.2 billion citizens.
Ron,
Yesterday when we were speaking, you made a reference to the existential question around identity and communication over the internet. Hearing a voice confirms existence. Meeting someone face-to-face further validates such. Email or chatting or leaving a comment on a Web page does no such thing.
But what if we began to look at it the other way? What if a voice or a personal meeting, due the ‘present’ nature of the terms, only validates a temporary existence rather than a permanent one? Where is the record of the conversation you had with your son this morning? While it may confirm your son’s existence to you, and vice-versa, it does little to confirm your son’s existence to me. What does do that? Your son’s Facebook page of course.
This was all inspired from the ‘Quote of the Day’ today in the New York Times:
“That will give me an identity. It will show that I am a human being, that I am alive, that I live on this planet. It will prove I am an Indian.”
Mohammed Jalil, a rickshaw puller in New Delhi, registering by computer into the world’s largest biometric data base, designed to keep official track of India’s 1.2 billion citizens.