family time

The clock strucketh (?) 3am, and it appears that innabar and I are actually blogging at the same hour.

We’ve been sitting in the same room, facing each other and typing away at our respective laptops for three hours straight. Blame it on our Max Brenner sugar high.

Mind you, we don’t perform the laptop-vigil too often – maybe once a week. But between all the scheduling, the promotion, the MySpace/Facebook friends and all of the videos everyone sends us from YouTube, it’s inescapable. But let’s face it – the amount of hours we spend catching up with “web-life” is going to skyrocket. How bittersweet — what could be sweeter than sitting in the same room with your beloved, firing through our life in the sounds of clicks, accompanied by some anonymous MySpace bands.

For better or worse (or at least for now), the internet is a medium for loners – one person per screen.
With exception of collaborative document editing (writely) and some basic collaborative doodling, most of what’s available does not encourage viral communication between people, neighbors, co-workers. Sure, they can “share”, but nothing encourages them to experience anything at the same moment. Nothing, except – perhaps – Jon Stewart.

When I was a child, my parents tried to restrict my TV viewing. Now, as relative adults, we guffaw at little children with cellphones, and criticize parents for letting kids play computer games.
But it’s not the same. TV is passive, Games are competitive.

Nobody I know sends 100 of their friends an email saying “I just subscribed to HBO, it’s the greatest thing ever”, but many of those friends could be seen sending me must-see links to YouTube.

In the future – I sincerely hope! – that instead of giving holiday presents, we’ll all be sending must-see links, experiences, and things we feel passionate about. It’ll be creative, competitive, and it could be expensive if you’re a sucker for production value… but if it gets innabar and I to stop blogging and get to bed, we’d be ever grateful.

🙂