Saturday, January 17, 2004
a stream of words going into the blue
(I'm breaking some major rules around here and posting on a Saturday. But, but, but I just got my new iBook which is begging to blog, and I have such a good quote from the New Yorker that I just can't help myself.)
In this week's New Yorker, Katha Pollitt writes a hysterical essay on cyber stalking a former lover. She tracks him down through google and find all the conferences he has attended in recent years. She even e-mails female members of his panels to find out if they slept with him.
Now, the question of the day... Have you ever googled an old girlfriend/boyfriend?
Politt also writes of her internet obsession.
He had accused me of being addicted to the Internet, and he was right. I spent hours every day following the news, and surfing from one odd Web site to another. I joined Listservs all over the left, from Aut-Oy-Sy, which focussed on the ideas of the Italian anarchist Toni Negri, to Women Leaders Online, for pro-choice Democratic feminists, and carried on intense discussions with people I came to feel I knew in some deep, ultimate way, although I had never met them and didn't want to. What I loved about the Internet was its purity and swiftness, I told him, the feeling of being without a body, of flying into space in all directions at once, becoming a stream of words going into the blue, a mind touching other minds. I think he took this as a sexual rejection.
(I'm breaking some major rules around here and posting on a Saturday. But, but, but I just got my new iBook which is begging to blog, and I have such a good quote from the New Yorker that I just can't help myself.)
In this week's New Yorker, Katha Pollitt writes a hysterical essay on cyber stalking a former lover. She tracks him down through google and find all the conferences he has attended in recent years. She even e-mails female members of his panels to find out if they slept with him.
Now, the question of the day... Have you ever googled an old girlfriend/boyfriend?
Politt also writes of her internet obsession.
He had accused me of being addicted to the Internet, and he was right. I spent hours every day following the news, and surfing from one odd Web site to another. I joined Listservs all over the left, from Aut-Oy-Sy, which focussed on the ideas of the Italian anarchist Toni Negri, to Women Leaders Online, for pro-choice Democratic feminists, and carried on intense discussions with people I came to feel I knew in some deep, ultimate way, although I had never met them and didn't want to. What I loved about the Internet was its purity and swiftness, I told him, the feeling of being without a body, of flying into space in all directions at once, becoming a stream of words going into the blue, a mind touching other minds. I think he took this as a sexual rejection.
