Eagleton Notes: The Simple Life - Not

Why have we suddenly started using this curious form of emphasising a statement? ?Quoi? Je vous entends demander. ?The making of a positive statement and then following it with 'not'. ?Why the French? ?Wondering if someone got the idea from the French use of 'pas' as a negation after the statement. ?Just a thought.

OK. ?Back to the theme. ?The simple life - lost and gone for ever. ?Just like Clementine.

I think that I was born with a 'need to be in communication' gene inherited from my Mum. ?The first requirement in the house when Mum and Dad got married was a telephone. ?I cannot envisage life without the telephone and have had a mobile/cellphone for over 20 years since the days when they were larger than bricks. ?I still have some of them and have been meaning to blog on that for several years.

However during that 20 years the whole subject of interpersonal communication has changed far beyond the impact of the cellphone.

The World Wide Web effectively came into being in 1990 and in about 1992 the first web browsers started making progress towards universal inter-personal communication. ?This was around the same time as the 2G cellular technology was introduced.

And with the advent of these two things the way most of us live our lives changed for ever.

I think that we have come to accept the WWW and the Internet, cellphones and now smartphones to such an extent that we fail to realise that instant communication for the 'ordinary' person is only a couple of decades old.

Before that even phone calls made over the terrestrial phone lines were expensive and often had to be booked in advance. ?Remember Star Trek? ?It started in 1966 and even many years later the 'communicator' was regarded as science fiction. ?The flip top cellphone with international call availability has come and gone to be replaced by a computer we hold in our hand with over a million times more computing power than the first spacecraft.

So now we have SMS via our cellphones, chat by text or voice via the cellphone network or via SKYPE and suchlike, Facebook with public and private communication and Twitter. ?We have emails too. ?All of these offer instant communication almost worldwide. ?As an aside I can recall even in 1998/9 when I was in the Australian outback, being able to ring my parents each night on my cellphone.

Of course we still have the public 'ordinary' telephone network and, of course, we can still put pen to paper and post a letter. ?Gone are the months a letter could take to New Zealand. ?Five days is about the norm now.

Blogland. ?I haven't mentioned Blogland. ?And it is Frances's post a few days ago Why do we blog??which started me on this course of thought.

So this evening (written Monday evening) as I am writing this blog post my next door neighbour keeps popping in (brought me some fresh mackerel he had caught today and just smoked). ?I've had a phone call (you know, the sort where the house phone rings and you chat to someone). ?My cellphone is going ten to the dozen with texts back and forth with a dear friend who is looking after her granddaughter's whilst her daughter and grandson are sunning themselves with The Handbag in Napier on holiday. ?I'm discussing, by email, bridge cameras with a friend in Fife whom I've known for 40 years. ?I'm looking up the news on the volcanic eruption in New Zealand. ?I'm playing four simultaneous games of Words with Friends. ?I have various emails to write before sleep and I have a phone call to make to a friend from teenage years in Canada to discuss our holiday in Italy in a few weeks time.

In short I have in front of me the tools to communicate with almost anyone almost anywhere.

Someone made a comment on a Blogland friend's post recently that "today's tech like phones, you ignore real life people beside you so communication ironically breaks down". ? I suppose that can happen and it's certainly a point of view I've heard expressed before. ?However I would offer the contrary view that we now have an entirely different form of communication in that many of us communicate much more: it's just that we have added many different forms of communication to that of face to face talking.

One tiny example. ?When I was a teenager a friend's father was the Chief Engineer on a deep sea ship which often spent 9 months away from Britain at a time. Whilst he was away his wife would get letters (often few and far between if I remember correctly) and that was it. ?He arrived home a virtual stranger in his own house. ?Now my son, Gaz, is a Chief Engineer and I can talk to him, email him, text him, Skype him and we need never lose touch at all. ?I know which scenario I prefer.?

One spin-off that all this produces is an awareness of the time differences between us all. ? Living in New Zealand half the year does make me very aware in any case but so that I don't get confused I have the following on my computer desktop.

This has been a bit of a disjointed ramble but I think it does serve the purpose of the heading: The Simple Life - Not!

Source: http://galenote.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-simple-life-not.html

mike adams janoris jenkins john edwards trial brandon weeden felicia day nfl 2012 draft miami dolphins