The digital decade

It is February 2011; nothing odd about that. Well, it was a decade ago that I joined the digital revolution, or at least the online version.

A decade ago, after a week of gate guard, I went home with an AOL disc in my hand, powered the mighty computer on and loaded the disc and waited. And waited.

But of course that waiting was nothing compared to the waiting ahead.

Once loaded, all these wonderful icons on the desktop, I double clicked on the AOL one and listened to the soon to familiar sound of the modem dialling.

And wait.

And wait.

And in time, I got the welcome to AOL page.

I looked at the screen expecting the tidal wave on information to swamp me at any moment. I looked and the screen looked back. I saw there was an e mail in box, and I had a mail. Welcome to AOL it said. Thanks.

Now, thanks to an aborted college course 18 months previous, and so was aware of search engines. I saw a box in which to enter a word to search. So, I typed

Pen pals.

Yes, I decided I needed a full inbox and that digital friends was the way to ensure this happened. So, I clicked on a link, waited, waited. The page loaded. I clicked on the link to the ads section. And begin to scroll down.

After a while I selected people to respond to I wrote initial letters. And, I did get many replies, and with some of them I did make real friends. I say friends, because that is what I made. I had not met any of them yet, but it turns out that I would meet some in the future. So, my weekends began to be filled with writing letters to and from people all over the world. I guess some of us learned how each other lived, and how that despite our distances, our lives are pretty similar.

I am writing this because I have received three mails today, one from one of those first friends, one from what could be called the middle period and one from a recent Flickr contact. I have never met any of them and yet I know details of their lives I don’t know of closest ‘real friends.’ Their news was not good; I feel every bit of their pain, really.

I guess my point is that a lot of folks we meet online have real lives and real problems; very real problems. And we share in their ups and downs, revel in their triumphs and feel their pain.

My thoughts are with three of my friends who are dealing with problems that dwarf anything I have ever dealt with. Stay strong my friends, i am with you in spirit.