“Nice to meet you.”

Subtitle: Cyber (Real?) Life: A nearly 70-something’s musing about “meeting” and “relating” on social media

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They, the images, sent and received, both ways, come. And, as all images, frozen in time; glimpses of a moment and that moment only. And offering no sensory touch or taste, scent or sound (although, this last, a video can share, at least, that much, but no more).

Thus, one is left to rely on the gift of sight. In this, spinning the Apostle’s word on his gravemound head, one is left to presume by faith the truth of the image. But is it (can it really be) true?

If (or so I believe) that for people to meet necessitates face-to-face encounter and that relationships require the real-time experience of being present one with another in the instant-by-instant, ceaseless expansion of shared history in times of joy and sorrow, happiness and anger, activity’s bustle and solitude’s quiet, then digital technology provides a realm for another kind of meeting, a different sort of relating. One in which truth rests nearly solely in the eye of the imagination of the beholder; that is, what, indeed who the viewer believes the image to be. And that only is as real as one’s inspiration (which is another way of saying one’s projection), which never can be who the person of the image truly is.

© 2021 PRA

Endnote: “…the Apostle’s word…” my reference to 2 Corinthians 5.7: For we walk by faith, not by sight.

#cyberspace #meetingonsocialmedia #digitaltechnology