I generally like Penenberg’s stuff, but the premise of his newest piece just really threw me.
His latest column on Wired News profiles Mary Hodder, someone who I met at Berkeley, actually in one of my classes at the j-school last year. She runs her own blog and is an Ÿber-connected mega-geek with all the blogosphere’s head honchos. Ok, cool.
So ok, she doesn’t print things (neither do I, unless I have to — like Chinatown bus tickets). And I take my laptop (or at least my email-enabled Ericsson T610) with me wherever I go.
But then there are some strange bits to this article down toward the end.
A recent Pew Internet & American Life Project study found that 88 percent of Americans who use the web claim the internet is part of their daily routines.
Doesn’t he mean it in reverse? 88 percent of American who use the Internet, (not to be confused with The Web), say that The Web is part of their daily routine? And if that isn’t wrong, then why isn’t it 100 percent? If you use the Web, you’re using the Internet. Or maybe the daily routine bit is key.
I had a look at the document in question, and it says:
88% of online Americans say the Internet plays a role in their daily routines.
Ok, so forget the Web vs. Internet thing. It’s how much people who are “online” (this term is never defined) use it in their daily lives.
Then we get to:
As more people plug into cyberspace, our interpersonal relationships — already framed by e-mail and real-time instant messaging — will become predominately digital. We’ll exist in multiple worlds of our own creation: the physical realm and the intellectual sphere constantly connected. Could personal avatars be far behind?
Are you kidding me? Firstly, aside from the fact that the majority of the world’s population has never made a phone call, much less sent an email, this idea is insane. Sure corresponding online with people you know in real life or virtually is fun (I’m emailing across the world all the time with people who I probably wouldn’t talk to as much) — but “predominately digital” ? So what does that mean that everyone’s going to sit at home in front of their WiFi laptop and get married online? Geeks have always loved to meet other geeks in real life from the Homebrew Computer Club to BloggerCon. As much as I love the Internet, I would never want to substitute it for real life. Personal avatars? Even in Neuromancer they lived outside the Metaverse most of the time.
Hodder herself is organizing a *gasp* “analog” event tonight at Beckett’s in Berkeley. (I’d love to go, btw.)
And then the kicker:
She’s gone digital. When will you?
Hello!?!? Chances are if you read Penenberg’s column, you read it online (read: digitally). Last I checked, Wired News is an online-only publication. You can’t get it any other way. Read that again. Wired. News. So that means you have to be online in order to get it. Most probably if you’re reading this blog-post or his column, you probably do a lot of the same things that Hodder, me and thousands of other people do — which is to say “using the web . . . [as] more than a tool; [and as] a primary source of information, entertainment and fun.”
What year is this, 1994? Are we still trying to get people to discover the Web?
