DAVID WEINBERG [via JOI ITO’s]:
I don’t see the Web as socratic. I see it as connective, and socratic dialogue is only one form of connecting, and a pretty paltry one at that. Yelling, joking, teasing, provoking, criticizing, grieving, and flirting are all forms of connecting. So is simultaneous masturbation (no, I don’t mean blogging). What makes the Web utopian (in some sense) is that it’s connective, not that it’s polite, rational or even intelligent.
i especially like the pun about simultanous masturbation not meaning blogging, but then i very much agree with what this guy says. it is the unfiltered rawness of web-interaction – or -connection – that makes it worthwhile. it is utopian also in the form it chooses, the general accessability of the internet leading to the abandonment of more and more notions of privacy, secrecy and ultimatly uniqueness. i get somehow less self-obsessed, if i encounter more and more people thinking like me, having similar bizarre intersts and laying it all open out there in the internet. it can be self-therapeutic, if that context is established. but of course it only works, if all people involved have the necessary inner detachment and use the web in this particular way. people can get hurt considerably, if this basic consense is not part of their baggage. and how to establish that?