Communication Breakdown

So I write a blog. I write what I feel and think or post whatever I find is interesting or disturbing. And I like it. I enjoy writing my blog. I enjoy writing here because even though I hope whatever I write is something interesting for others to read, the only censorship is myself, there's no budget and no expectation of financial returns, it's writing for the pure joy of it.

But it'll never replace the real world.

What I write on my blog, I write for anyone to read. When I want to talk to my friends, I meet my friends. I look them in the eye and enjoy a conversation, because in my opinion there is no better way to communicate to another human being than face to face.

Don't get me wrong, I love how the internet connects millions together. Through Facebook I've managed to catch up with friends I thought long since forgotten and helped me pimp out whatever work or events or whatever I have to the public. E-mails have helped speed up work, helped me communicate with friends across the sea. And both have helped me communicate with others in general when I can't meet them.

But it's not a replacement. I'd rather talk to someone face to face than just read text or even through the wonderful world of Skype. I don't have MSN or Yahoo messenger for precisely that reason - it's like a poor excuse for a conversation.

Even the great communication tool we had before the internet, Alexander Graham Bell's telephone. It's great to communicate with, but it's not a replacement to me. If there's no other way to communicate but the phone or the internet I'll gladly use it but it's not a replacement.

I write this because I realize that with some people I know this is the only way they communicate with me, even if they're just a stone's throw away, and even when the shit hit's the fan and when there may be important things to talk about, it's still the phone, the net, anything. Anything but meeting up.

Perhaps with a lot of people these days there's no real difference, but to me there is a huge difference. Many people more intelligent than me have written reams of text on how things like the internet have severed real human interaction, real human connection, real conversations, making us lose touch of one of the many things that make us human - the fact that we communicate with each other.

When one person talks to another, it's not just their mouth that's talking, but their entire body - their eyes, their hands, their legs, everything. It's why on-line poker is never going to beat the real thing because it's sterile - you make a guess based on someone's on-line actions but you see nothing, absolutely nothing.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I would rather have a five minute conversation face to face with a friend of mine rather than a five hour conversation over the phone. If I can make time for a friend and they're in the same time zone as me, I would make time to meet them, especially if I thought what I was saying was important.

The internet, phones, whatever - they're all just tools of convenience, not replacements. And if a person meant something to me, even the slightest, I'd rather look them in the eye than stare at their profile picture.

Pretty ironic, I know, for someone who has a Facebook account, MySpace account, Friendster account and two e-mail addresses. But if there's one thing I realized today it's that if you're within short driving distance of someone and you spend more time talking to them on the phone or on the internet than meeting them face to face, either that person means as much to you as a random person that's added you on Facebook that you may have met but aren't too sure thus keeping your distance or you just don't want to meet that person (and vice versa).

Even starfish don't keep to themselves and they literally don't even have brains.