Back to the Future

In the early days of the Internet (early 1990's) there was a group of visionary educators from around the world who realized that we were on the brink of a digital revolution. In those days, almost all of the K12 (kindergarten until grade 12) educators online either knew each other or knew of each other. All you needed was at least one Internet connection in the school and you could take off. 

Many exciting international, educational projects were initiated by teachers in the field during this time. Ministries of Education from around the world still had no idea what the Internet was all about and Bill Gates hadn't yet realized that the Internet was the next big thing. By the time he did, the Internet was already firmly entrenched as a grassroot phenomenon and noone was going to take it away. It was for the people, by the people and belonged to the people - where teachers were empowered in ways never thought possible before. They were no longer dependent only on those things dictated from above. It was an exciting time to be a teacher.

I will try to recreate some of the excitement from these years in posts to come. I know that many of my old virtual colleagues are still out there - whether still teaching or retired. You are warmly invited to tell us something about your own initiatives during these years, either in the "comments section" below this post or by sending me a posting which I will post as a "guest posting".

 

Looking forward to hearing from you.

When the wheels begin to grind

These are not words of confession, but rather an explanation. For most of you, this will be a journey into the complete unknown. For others, who have managed to look under the surface, much of this will not be too surprising, although there will still be parts that will have you shaking your heads in wonder.

Most of you know me as a peaceful man. I have never had much to do with weapons of any sort, but I have come to realize over time that in my hands is a smoking gun. My fingerprints are all over it.  And there is nothing I could have done to prevent it, for I was obsessed. One day I sat in front of the computer and stared, stared until there was a crack in the wall.

But let me start at the beginning. At the beginning of this long, murky journey.

They say that it takes about twenty minutes for your brain to register that your stomach is full. By then you may have overeaten, taken in much more than you should have. But how were you to know?  How can you make any proper judgement, if your brain fails you?

I began my foray into the virtual when the Internet was still a wild frontier. Most people were still unaware that it existed, let alone understood its potential. Even those of us who were most involved didn’t quite understand where it might lead, until it was much too late.

I have always believed myself to be a moral person. You may dispute this after you have heard my tale. Perhaps my ability to keep these two worlds separate in my mind for so long was the reason why it took me so long to believe that I was doing anything wrong. Even when the two worlds collided in the end, it still took my brain some time to register.

But initially, the virtual was a godsend for me.

If you met me, you would probably not notice much at first. You might register that I was quieter than most people, averting eye contact after the initial meeting, offering a sentence or two to the conversation, but then closing myself off in some corner, both mentally and physically. You might also notice that the longer I was there, the more uncomfortable I appeared: the conversation working its way around me, but not including me.

Over the years I have tried to understand what is wrong with me. I looked for labels, but they were hard to come by, especially before the age of Google. I made up a special label for myself: emotionally and socially autistic. Many people would just write this off as being an introvert. But they don’t know. They couldn’t look inside and see.

I don’t know if searching for labels has made my situation any easier. The symptoms were always there, whether they had a name or not. OCD was one such label.  It was only much later in life that I realized that this label also applied to me. I did so when it appeared that the symptoms were getting worse. But I am good at hiding things. People around me only saw a part of the symptoms, and as a result, viewed them amusingly as oddly eccentric.

But for me, they have been torture. I cannot leave the house until I have checked things again and again. I cannot finish parking a car until I get out and make sure that I am exactly between the lines. Even after locking the car with the remote, I have to walk around checking that all of the doors are locked, maybe doing this two or three times. When I leave the house I lock the door, pulling on the handle three or four times to make sure it is locked, and then, as I start to walk away, I have to come back again to make sure that it is really locked. Sometimes I can avoid coming back if I make a mental effort to open a door in a part of my mind, enter, and register that I was there. But this requires me to forcefully stop the streams of consciousness for a moment, and that is not an easy thing to do.

Those around me never see the complete ceremony of my OCD. If someone is with me, I may make do with just checking the front and back door on the driver’s side to see if they are locked, or make only one pass around the house to make sure everything is turned off and in place. The abridged form of the ceremony is difficult for me, but it is necessary, to keep people from thinking that I am totally crazy. My own wife often sighs with impatience when I am making one of the abbreviated checks. And I hate being me.

You might ask why I haven’t been officially diagnosed concerning such things. This is because I have never gone to a psychologist or psychiatrist, despite my wife’s prodding. She is probably the closest to understanding the severity of my situation because she has to live with me. And why haven’t I gone? I cannot trust myself in the hands of another.

Lately I saw something on TV that made me wonder if I have Aspergers Syndrome. It is not that I am a hypochondriac of the mentally ill. I am simply trying to cope with who I am, and it isn’t easy.

I suppose I really should go to see a psychologist. But it’s not going to happen any time soon.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

 Who is this speaking? Is this the author, or the writer of the blog? Is this David, or a made up character in a new novel? We must remember that this is fiction. Or is it? How do we separate the two?

The book's the thing

There are still books out there. Many, many books. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Books have been here for... well, not forever, but for a very long time. More than I can remember, at least, but that’s not saying much.

The thing is: the book is quite a clever concept. A bundle of knowledge, strapped together by pieces of leather... well, once by leather... But it is the concept of the book which matters, whether in hard cover or in soft cover.

“What about an electronic cover?”
“How can something electronic be a cover? It is virtual.”
“Therefore it does not exist?”
“Yes, I mean no. I mean, it must exist if we can still read its pages.”
“Yes?”
“But that doesn’t make it a book.”
“Not even an electronic book?”
“Call me a romantic. I still like the smell of leather... Well, something to hold in my hands.”
“I hold my Kindle in my hands. Can even hold it and turn the pages with the same hand.”

*insert awkward pause

“Anyhow, I liked things the way they were.”
“Writing on stone, you mean.”
“Now let’s not go to extremes.”
“Me go to extremes!”

The thing is, electronic books, electronic information of any type, excites me. No, it is not a fetish. I simply like access to anything, anywhere, at any time. Many of you will claim that I have become a part of the “me now” generation which demands immediate satisfaction, and can do with nothing less. But I will have nothing to do with this.

I have always had a fascination for books. I would travel with my parents and suddenly disappear. They knew then to search for the nearest bookstore. Opening a book was an exploration, an exploration into a parallel universe from whence I emerged changed, even if only in a small way. But so much has happened since. It used to be that a teacher could stand up at the front of a one room schoolhouse and teach students all there was needed to know. A set of encyclopedias could contain all of the information of both the modern and ancient worlds. Dictionaries could contain an accurate list of vocabulary and not need to be updated for decades. But then came the information explosion. Books became out of date almost before they were published. A wise teacher soon realized that s/he could no longer be a valid source of information but should rather serve as “facilitator”, in leading students to search, find and properly evaluate information. Huge conglomerations which once controlled the access to knowledge, have now lost their control over us. And writers can now easily turn out their novels on a computer, and even go way of self-publishing rather than suffer years of rejection at the hands of literary agents and publishers who are becoming less and less willing to take chances in a market whose bottom is falling out.

When I finally got my own novel published, I had no idea what was waiting for me in the literary world. Bookstores, however big, can not even represent a fraction of what is out there. Many of you will claim that most of the books published today are probably not even worth printing. But the thing is, there are many good books out there which would have never gotten published otherwise. And I, personally, take this to be the decisive factor: not the surplus of what we consider unworthy, but rather the absence of what should be there.

But what I have found to be even more compounding is how social networks offer an interactive platform in which readers and writers come together - where readers and writers no longer sit in worlds clearly separate, but are now accountable to each other. Writing has become a social experience in ways never conceived of before.

And I realize now that being a writer not only means that I should write books, but that I also should bring something back to books and writers that I read. This is why I began my own book review blog - “The Virtual Muser eBook Review”. And I must say that I am learning as much from this experience as I am from my own writing.

Books are here to stay. Maybe not in the way that you would expect or hope them to. But they have been here forever, at least in the human experience. Whether they were written in stone, or told and passed down from generation to generation. Think of it: the concept has never changed. And what about the need?

You might say, then - why even sell books? Why not just put them up there for anybody to download? Isn’t the message the thing that is important? You may or may not be surprised to hear that more and more writers are doing exactly this. Is this the beginning of a serious trend? We will wait and find out.

The Man who would be God

The characters worked their way in and out of the darkness. The only thing that seemed to give them life was the solitary light coming from the computer screen. Michael was all alone in the room. The only visitor was his muse. Yet he never knew when, or if, she’d appear again.

He looked again at the words on the screen. When was it that he had become the executioner? His virtual finger hovered over the send button. It would take only one click to become creator. Creating man out of his own likeness. He looked nervously around the room, wondering if he was being watched. How was this any different from the characters in his novel - from the imaginary world he had created for them?

Yet his characters had never tried to enter into his own world. They had attempted, perhaps, to escape the confines of his fiction through creating fiction of their own, having tasted from the tree of knowledge. But they had never sought to replace him.

And here he was, watching helplessly as he gradually lost control over his virtual creation. He had invited Guy to inhabit his world, help him rediscover what he thought he had lost. And instead, Guy revealed a new world that Michael couldn’t have. But it was the same world in which Michael was living. A world in which he and Guy could not both exist. Was Michael to be banished for trying to replace his own creator?

When do fiction and reality no longer exist in separate worlds - and mere mortals have the audacity to believe that they can change the laws of creation?

This is our journey of discovery in - “As I Died Laughing”.

"What are you mad at?"
"Everyone. Everything."
"What's so funny then?"
"The only thing I can do now is laugh."

And so it begins.

Pardon me while I check if I exist

I don’t know about you, but I enjoy my privacy … that is, if I really have a choice between being alone or being with others. Isn’t that what it is all about … choices?

Last night there was a power blackout in our small community down here in the desert. Started in the evening and by 10:30 pm I decided that it was time to give up to the higher powers and go to bed. At midnight I was awakened by the barking of dogs. I thought that the electricity must have come back on, but no – pitch black. I buried my head deep into the pillow and somehow got back to sleep. This morning the electricity had returned and while nursing a morning coffee I received an SMS from my wife who is presently in the States.

“I hear you’ve had air raid sirens.”

“Don’t know,” I replied, thinking back to the barking dogs in the middle of the night. “No electricity.”

I checked the news on the net and apparently rockets were falling everywhere. I checked the radio and all I got were songs that are usually played when we are at war. No connection to the outside world for a night and see what happens.

War is not a laughing matter, but sometimes the only thing we can do is laugh. (More about that when my book comes out. Stay tuned.) We struggle our way through the 24 hours of the day, with choices that we make and choices that are made for us. Choice is not something that we really appreciate until it is taken away from us. 100 TV satellite stations, Internet connection to every small corner of the world, and poof … the power goes out.

“Why was the power out?” my wife SMS’s me.

“Don’t know,” I helpfully reply.

“Just wanted to be sure that it wasn’t because they are dropping bombs on you,” she reassures me.

“Whatever.”

With that I go to make myself another cup of coffee while we still do have electricity. Although I could make coffee on the gas heater, if needed. At least there, there is a backup plan. Nothing like low tech, eh?

These sad Israeli songs are killing me. It’s time for some Pink Floyd, Neil Young … I’d even settle for the Moody Blues. So much for that, I tell myself, shutting off the radio. “You see, I had the choice to listen or not.”

“If I am in the middle of the desert and I lose my Internet connection, do I really exist?”

I can hear a thousand voices scoffing at this idea, but wait, think about it for a moment. Note that I said lose my Internet connection, which is different from not having an Internet connection in the first place. My id has been extended into my virtual identity. And without it, I am lost in the wilderness. (This is where the rotten tomatoes start flying through cyberspace in my direction.) But think about it, those of you who are brave enough to stare into the crater. What makes up the essence of you? If you have found your way somehow to read these words, you must be connected to this virtual world of elusive proportions in some way. Are you merely visiting, or are you inhabiting virtual space?  

“Truly you exaggerate,” you tell me, after having a moment to digest my flagrant statement. “Existence is not so fragile as to depend upon a lost Internet connection, or even on a sweeping power blackout. Whether or not you can hear the news or lend your voice, a world exists out there, regardless.”

“Whether a world exists out there or not is not the point at hand,” I reply. “Actually, I favour the idea of parallel universes. And I am not asking for proof that they exist. What is significant at this point of time is how they are relevant to me.”

“That is a pretty big ego, you have,” you remark.

“Yes,” I say, “it must encompass a whole world.”

Would a radio station exist if absolutely no one was listening to it? Surely the line would go dead. Or would its radio beam extend out into infinite space, where finally it would be picked up by an alien on a Sunday drive out who would smash his spacecraft into a small asteroid out of pure manic depression upon listening to this slew of sad Israeli songs.

My existence doesn’t necessarily depend upon other people. By writing this blog, I may be fooling the gods into believing that someone really is listening to me simply by speaking into the wilderness. But note that last night, when I still had about two hours of battery power left to generate my laptop, I could have written this blog then. But there didn’t appear to be any point then. “No one there to hear me.”

“But you are writing it offline, you twit,” an invisible voice says. “No one will read it until you put it online, in any case.”

“You are missing the point,” I say.

What is the point? It must go back to choices, and the choice of privacy. As some of you may know, I am a social outcast, mainly by choice, and partly because of a dysfunctional personality in any setting where any more than two people gather. Yet I have been running a successful virtual community for the last 15 years. After 21 years on the net, one might say that my virtual personality is firmly entrenched, with roots spreading out everywhere. But unlike the so-called real world, I choose when to connect and when not to. Unless there is a power blackout.

And here is my most difficult question for you.

“Are you a different person, now that you have a virtual identity?”

The faint of heart need not respond. For those of you who want to make yourselves heard, talk to us.

“Stare into the crater.”