A friend of a friend put me in touch with a bona-fide journo type, because I wanted to know more of those people. Don’t ask me why.
And it struck me that the experiential virtuality of the interaction is something that not everyone would get. So M introduced us via a group email (as in small group of three), and then we chatted a little, arranged to meet up for a drink next week, and swapped mobile phone numbers. Done deal. Four emails. No talking.
Sometimes I say to my unwired friends that I’ve been “talking” to someone, and they assume – perhaps reasonably – that I’ve met them. To them, IM or email doesn’t count as a real friendship. To me, human is human, whatever the platform.
I like how technology is an enabler to relationships. But I guess some people struggle. At Christmas, I ran into a friend of a friend of my parents, a deeply cool woman in her fifties, who had just separated from her husband, and was feeling her way in the new, slightly-single world for the first time in thirty years. I’d actually always thought she was way cooler than him, and was keen to hang out. Must stop talking like I live in LA. Sorry.
“Let’s swap mobiles,” I said to her.
“Why?”
“So we can text. Meet up. You know.”
She got out her paper filofax. Now I don’t have anything against paper, although I’m not sure the paperless office will ever become a reality, and I sincerely hope that newspapers and books never go out of fashion, but it’s a back-up-free platform, and as a professionally disorganised person, that scares me.
She starts turning pages and I start feeling nostalgic. She wants all my information. I explain that mobile numbers is enough, but I sense her desire for a full data set - I’ve not had that for years – so I comply. I like to make people feel better.
A week or so later, I text her. Never hear back. I’m guessing that she can’t read text messages, yet. And I have a brain like a sieve so I never followed it up till now when she popped into my head.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment