As another nerd who grew up on the rural side of my country, the internet was a huge blessing and once we first got our first modem in our house I finally got to experience how it felt to talk to people who cared about the same things as me.
That would be a small slice of the section of people you'd be able to speak through the internet. I've probably, since starting to use the internet, spoken with more people in my lifetime than my whole linage before me, by just conversing on internet forums and emailing lists for decades (not that it's a leaderboard or anything, just illustrating the point).
Besides, it'd probably get boring talking to the exact same people always, new perspectives are always refreshing regardless of how much I disagree with them :)
> That would be a small slice of the section of people you'd be able to speak through the internet
i mean, you did say "anything in the world" :) that could include a large community, if we decided to get offline more often.
> Besides, it'd probably get boring talking to the exact same people always, new perspectives are always refreshing regardless of how much I disagree with them :)
how is that different from being offline?
* i'm probably coming across more accusatory than i feel - i'm interrogating my own feelings on this subject and i've found that i tend to feel like being online has been a net negative for me in pretty much every aspect of my life.
Overall it seems to me like different living situations, different geographical locations and different cultures end up creating people with vastly different perspectives. Put all of these people in the same location and after a while they think a bit alike, or at least "a bit alike" within a spectrum which gets smaller, and very uncommon to find those "outside of the spectrum" when you're actually in a physical space, limited to talking person by person.
I feel like the pervasiveness of the internet makes it much easier to find those perspectives that exists outside the norm, and I guess those are more interesting to me as I don't find those around me always, only under certain circumstances or even just happenstance.
So I guess my mind didn't go to "large community around me where I am" because I'd fear they still wouldn't posses, even less gain, those "fresh" perspectives that I seek.
I didn't feel you being accusatory FWIW, and always appreciate when people think about and question what I think, so thank you.
As another nerd who grew up on the rural side of my country, the internet was a huge blessing and once we first got our first modem in our house I finally got to experience how it felt to talk to people who cared about the same things as me.
I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.
> I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world.
not even an in-person community of people with similar interests?
That would be a small slice of the section of people you'd be able to speak through the internet. I've probably, since starting to use the internet, spoken with more people in my lifetime than my whole linage before me, by just conversing on internet forums and emailing lists for decades (not that it's a leaderboard or anything, just illustrating the point).
Besides, it'd probably get boring talking to the exact same people always, new perspectives are always refreshing regardless of how much I disagree with them :)
> That would be a small slice of the section of people you'd be able to speak through the internet
i mean, you did say "anything in the world" :) that could include a large community, if we decided to get offline more often.
> Besides, it'd probably get boring talking to the exact same people always, new perspectives are always refreshing regardless of how much I disagree with them :)
how is that different from being offline?
* i'm probably coming across more accusatory than i feel - i'm interrogating my own feelings on this subject and i've found that i tend to feel like being online has been a net negative for me in pretty much every aspect of my life.
Overall it seems to me like different living situations, different geographical locations and different cultures end up creating people with vastly different perspectives. Put all of these people in the same location and after a while they think a bit alike, or at least "a bit alike" within a spectrum which gets smaller, and very uncommon to find those "outside of the spectrum" when you're actually in a physical space, limited to talking person by person.
I feel like the pervasiveness of the internet makes it much easier to find those perspectives that exists outside the norm, and I guess those are more interesting to me as I don't find those around me always, only under certain circumstances or even just happenstance.
So I guess my mind didn't go to "large community around me where I am" because I'd fear they still wouldn't posses, even less gain, those "fresh" perspectives that I seek.
I didn't feel you being accusatory FWIW, and always appreciate when people think about and question what I think, so thank you.