That is so kewl!!

i saw this through stumbleupon.... brilliant methinks!

And yet we'll let computers and the internet continue to destroy our social lives.   I'm not happy about it and one day I will go back to table top games like Monopoly and Stratego, but when I do not know. Could somebody cure me from this electronic decease?

Before we are born, as our conciousness develops, we are alone (unless we are part of a set of twins).

We struggle into a world we do not understand, cold, noisy, and demanding.

We die alone, with no one to hear our final thoughts.

And in between, it's somehow supposed to be normal and right for us to be social, sociable creatures: ones who seek out others, look for direct conversation (which leads to direct confrontation), and love to be with others "like" us.

I'm a boomer; I've been told all my life that there is no one exactly like me. I find myself resentful if anyone tells me they understand me. "Understanding" me means they know my flaws, not my strengths.

TV, video games, computers on line, GPS units... all allow us to be "social/sociable" with actually interacting face to face with anyone else. The people on TV just do what they do; we do what we do while we watch them or vaguely pay attention. the games and internet gives us more interaction (and more), but again, the people aren't really there (no one knows you're a dog, all the women are nekkid fat guys). Even GPS units give us map readers/navigators who aren't really there. It's why we hate cell phones and love computer forums. Cell phones let the jerks back into our lives and we have to talk to them. Forums let us block the wingnuts and others who we cannot stand and rail at people's behavior who really do not make any major impact on our daily lives. (If Skip/Andy/whomever gets our goat, does it really affect anything other than a piece of software's fine details?)

The disease is life that forces us to act differently than the way we are just prior to birth and just before death. No one is there to explain what birth is; anyone trying to comfort ua as we die is superfluous: we (and they) know they are not going with us, even if we are dying at the same time.

We are alone, disbelieving that anyone else is really alive with us. It is a rare moment when anyone touches us in a way we like; it is far more often that everyone annoys us, interrupts us, and generally gets in our way. Work is work and play is play, and none of us play well with others.