With the Covid 19 Corona Virus filling the airwaves, the over-the-garden-fence the Messenger, WhatsApp and Zoom conversations and yes Old School Texts and Phone calls, the virus thrusting change upon us faster than we could imagine, is it too early to look to the future beyond the outbreak and ask what might be in store for us?
I have not posted here since 2013 when during the early years in this house in Yorkshire, without friends hereabouts, I had continued to develop online exchanges and a new type of friendship. Mo’time, my first serious blog platform, came and went with a change of ownership but having tried a few possible alternatives, some of us found our way onto Facebook where a half dozen of us still hang out and observe each other’s lives from afar. At least one I met in person, in the real world and though there are others I would like to meet, for the moment, the virus has stopped all real-world meetings. But there is an upside, the deaths of thousands notwithstanding, in our social isolation, we have time to think, to draw breath and to reach out to old friends across the void, to finish old projects and begin new ones, rediscover what makes us who we are and where, singularly and collectively, we might head from here.
One thing I never embraced ever since I first encountered it in 2011, is Twitter. Don’t get me wrong, it is a valuable tool if you want to get early warning of an earthquake (Google indexes Twitter in real-time thus picking up important news wherever it might be trending) but the idea of size limited communications just does not appeal to me and it is no surprise that it has become the favourite mouthpiece of the world’s most vacuous ranter. Complex truths need more nuanced treatment, space to grow, so for me, the blog form is the one and it feels good to be back, writing again, thinking on the hoof and in between posts, chewing the cud. (Don’t know where the sudden bovine imagery came from – I’ll be referring to the milk of human kindness next!)
I will let some old friends know and hopefully make some new ones along the way and I will reference things I find too, starting with this article I found on Flipboard https://www.vice.com/en_in/article/wxekvw/the-world-after-coronavirus-healthcare-labor-climate-internet which examines just some of the questions about the future we can begin to wonder about, and although it is written from an American viewpoint, there is much that applies to the rest of our global village…
I have not posted here since 2013 when during the early years in this house in Yorkshire, without friends hereabouts, I had continued to develop online exchanges and a new type of friendship. Mo’time, my first serious blog platform, came and went with a change of ownership but having tried a few possible alternatives, some of us found our way onto Facebook where a half dozen of us still hang out and observe each other’s lives from afar. At least one I met in person, in the real world and though there are others I would like to meet, for the moment, the virus has stopped all real-world meetings. But there is an upside, the deaths of thousands notwithstanding, in our social isolation, we have time to think, to draw breath and to reach out to old friends across the void, to finish old projects and begin new ones, rediscover what makes us who we are and where, singularly and collectively, we might head from here.
One thing I never embraced ever since I first encountered it in 2011, is Twitter. Don’t get me wrong, it is a valuable tool if you want to get early warning of an earthquake (Google indexes Twitter in real-time thus picking up important news wherever it might be trending) but the idea of size limited communications just does not appeal to me and it is no surprise that it has become the favourite mouthpiece of the world’s most vacuous ranter. Complex truths need more nuanced treatment, space to grow, so for me, the blog form is the one and it feels good to be back, writing again, thinking on the hoof and in between posts, chewing the cud. (Don’t know where the sudden bovine imagery came from – I’ll be referring to the milk of human kindness next!)
I will let some old friends know and hopefully make some new ones along the way and I will reference things I find too, starting with this article I found on Flipboard https://www.vice.com/en_in/article/wxekvw/the-world-after-coronavirus-healthcare-labor-climate-internet which examines just some of the questions about the future we can begin to wonder about, and although it is written from an American viewpoint, there is much that applies to the rest of our global village…