Blast from my past
Friday, December 4, 2009 at 12:00PM This time from April 2002 just after I had invited Christopher Locke over to speak:
Soul 2 Soul
There I was, standing at Oxford Circus saying "thankyou and goodnight" to RageBoy after a long, hard day of talking, debating, disagreeing, agreeing ..... "opening the kimono" as he would put it. He'd crossed the Atlantic at my request, at a time of personal heartbreak, to give a series of talks on The Cluetrain, Gonzo Marketing, life, the universe......
We were there because of text on a screen, two souls connected by a tenous stream of binary code spanning the globe, bifurcating and re-uniting through boring routers which have no concept of meaning.
And yet ..........
I looked into those big, sad, soulful, hurting eyes and I wanted to give him a hug.
People who say the internet is a geeky, meaningless side show to life have no idea.
This stuff matters.
Reader Comments (6)
yeah, those were dark days indeed. thanks for the retrospective hug, Euan. <g>
Any time Chris.
Indeed it does.
A decent number (a majority, now) of the people I call real friends of mine are people I started connecting with via hyperlinks and bits, that then I or they followed on by making an effort to connect F2F. Once that connection was established, in most cases (but not all) the relationship has continued to grow and over several years have matured into trusted friendships that I suspect will last a long time and make a significant difference in my life. I have helped some of them, some have helped me and in the rest of the cases I believe that help and support would be available of possible, if needed or asked for.
Yes, as you said, this stuff matters.
Hi Euan, I was about to comment on some of your recent posts on the power of ever more "social" linking (power vs bullying for example - I'm not convinced "more" is always better - I will post on that in a moment.) This blast from the past actually illustrates my point.
I started blogging in 2001 too. I have maintained links with Chris (cluetrain then rageboy and more recently mystic-bourgeoisie) though I have never met him in the flesh, but I second your emotion from my own experiences that meeting links in the flesh add a very valuable dimension. Oh yes, this stuff matters - in a big way - but when it comes to meaning, quality is more important than quantity.
True but "quality" is often a weasel word use by those seeking control to put down others.