July 3, 2005

  • Two Things About the 'Net (a takeoff on yesterday's)

    There are two things about the internet.  The first is that you
    can hear someone mention a famous building by a famous architect in a
    famous place, forget most of it, go online and put "Bilbao Spain
    Guggenheim" into Google, and voila:  instant expert.  Fifteen
    minutes later, having viewed the panorama, sampled the art, checked the
    arrival time from Madrid and the local airport, and looked at the
    prices in the nearest restaurantes, you could excusably think there was
    actually no need to visit the place in person.

    Then there's the other thing about the internet.  Over two decades
    ago, before there was an internet, you could have stumbled on a
    little-visited corner of a famous place, and sat there all alone for
    hours in a light drizzle, alternately watching the fog drift in from
    the Forth and being blind and quiet and alone in that fog, with your damp back
    against the ancient stone, contemplating a doorway leading, ruinous, from outdoors to outdoors; your
    fingers tingling with chill and your mind slowly melding with the eons
    of minds that meditated just there, in just that way.  Then today
    you could have put "Edinburgh monument Arthur's Seat" into Google and
    voila:  the panorama, the arrival time from London and the local
    express, the prices at the nearest pubs -- and hundreds of evocative stills of
    the stone and the city and the doorway and the mist.  And you
    could have excusably damned the technology that makes it possible for
    anyone to imagine, for one instant, that there is no need to visit the
    place in person.

Comments (11)

  • There's nothing like being there in person.  Pictures will never do places justice to those who love those places.

  • Looking at places on the internet just makes me want to visit them more. . .and that's frustrating because I don't get to travel as much as I'd like.  I smiled at your last post, too--the palace and chapel at Holyrood House were among my favorite things in Scotland.  Dang!  Now I want to go back and see it again!

  • I promise I'll never be that second kind.

  • Sounds wonderful for those places that you will likely never be able to see.  But, like they said, nothing beats walking around and absorbing a place.

  • People do tell me that they do not buy my ebooks because they can not hold the book, smell the book, feel the book...

    I agree, there is something about reality that is...

    addictive.

    Sail on... sail on!!!

  • have to agree with your previous visitors - looking at photos and having information is great, but there's no substitution for being there, feeling the stones, breathing the air. It's the difference betwen a picture of sand, and feeling the sand between your toes. Give me the gritty feeling any day

  • 1 there is a lot of places i visit only on the internet. unfortunately for someone busy like me, or who has limited resources like me, sometimes the internet is as close as i can get. but at the back of my mind, i am still hoping i will get to visit  places like reyjavik and banff and tasmania in my lifetime.

    2 about google: sometimes it is so easy to pretend to be a genius because of the internet. last friday i won a t-shirt on a radio contest, because i googled the answer (and i refuse to feel bad that i sort of cheated on a yes/no question on account of a t-shirt ). someone mentions a book or a movie during chat, and i look it up, and then i have response. more often than not though, i try to remember to preface my response with: google says...or friends know me enough to say: you googled again!

  • google is real, but it's not reality. I'd rather feel the old stone at my back, but will settle for the cyber experience until my old back can touch the walls.

  • I am sitting here on an early July 4th, cup of tea in hand, the birds are singing. I can't help but think of all the minds that have come here, touched these electric stones, and left their meditations; I cannot so quickly damn the technology. It seems that anything we create can be used as creative or destructive. Above it all the soul shines clearly. Maybe it is a question of what we say with our spirits that matters.

  • not so fast!
    ANYONE who has wanderlust as bad as I do will tell you that images are nice, but there is never a substitute for the real thing (love kind of works that way too, but that's a story for another day).
    But on the other hand...
    What I LOVE about the Web is that it allows me to return to my childhood fancy for things that make their appearances now on my blog's backgrounds and banners. The past can only be relived in such a manner.
    Although, I will grant you this one very uncanny thing -- I was saying just last night how very much I would love to visit Bilbao one day - seat of my ancestors...

  • I have to admit that I am hopelessly addicted to the internet, although it has been sometime since I have really had the chance to spend much time at the computer. I like to use it to do things like this, though. That is, interacting with delightful people that I enjoy but whom I will probably never meet. It expands my horizons. It is also slightly dangerous in some ways, and it has to be used cautiously because it is easy to let it replace real relationships with people, which is not a good thing.

    I rarely use the internet for virtual travel. I enjoy reading blogs about places people visit, but I do not just visit websites about far away places. I think it is so much better to actually go there and see for myself!

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