Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Am I right to feel offended?

By the Marketplace report this morning about turning off the WiFi at a coffee shop in the northwest in an effort to "encourage dialog"?

I mean, what do they think we have here? The blogosphere, listservs, usenet...these are all the great-grand-children of the original coffee houses. Where else outside of universities are there discussions of all sorts going on at the intellectual levels that can be found on the internet? Take just the links to the right -->

A Little Pregnant, Brooklyn Girl, Bitch PhD and many others are discussing Reproductive Rights (abortion, adoption, IVF and associated assisted reproductive technology). Many, many links are to blogs that often talk about the war, class, religion, gay rights, euthenasia, Sudan, sex education, morality and television programming, commercialization and television programming, consumerism, guilt over living in wealthy nations where people go hungry and homeless.

I was especially annoyed by the reporter bringing up that old standard -- the internet isolates us. Hello? It my imagination or did APL and I not just get together with our kids this past weekend? I'm a regular reader of bloggers from all over the US and Canada, of people with differing viewpoints. The one thing you all have in common is I think you write well. And some of y'all read my blog too. In what way are we isolating ourselves? I would say that we would be more isolated if we were NOT utilizing the vast resources of the internet.

Sheesh.

End of rant.

2 comments:

Phantom Scribbler said...

Oh please. I think they want to make us believe that the internet isolates us so that we'll turn off our computers and spend more time in "dialogue" with their radio and TV programs.

Yankee, Transferred said...

Yeah, what you said, Liz!