Intelligently Artificial

Now that is Streaming Media

An open letter to all my Facebook friends.
Is this really the best we can do?

I did some interesting things to day:

• I went to a museum with my students, looked at stuff, got lost, distracted, ended up in a place I never intended to be and learned something new, engaged in random and unpredictable conversations with students and, twice, with a complete stranger;
• I sat around a table over food and drink with my students and a colleague and talked about everything from writing to shopping for shoes to near misses with DC traffic to communications technologies.
• I walked around in public with my students in the rain talking about our lives.
• I wandered up to our department offices for no particular reason just to see who was there and engage them in random conversations about anything whatsoever.
• On my way into the library, I spotted a librarian friend whom I hadn’t seen in several weeks and just went over to talk with her about nothing in particular. . .a conversation that suddenly turned thought-provokingly particular.

The day isn’t two thirds over yet and I’m exhausted.  Talking with people face-to-face, especially in groups, you never know what is going to happen.  Things get unpredictable very quickly and you have to work hard to keep up.  But people inspire you, provoke you, piss you off, and you feel better at the end of it, larger somehow, more substantial.

The latest Facebook overhaul (really just the first stage in a comprehensive roll-out of new services and functions) promises to leave me feeling a lot less exhausted in the future.  It also promises to leave me, or rather, to leave all  of us, shadows of our former selves.