When I die, what happens online?

I’ve taken something of an accidental hiatus from the blog the past few months. “Real life” responsibilities left me rather distracted, and without a word, I “disappeared” from the face of the earth, as far as everyone at Dangerous Intersection knew anyway. Or, in my view, Dangerous Intersection perhaps “disappeared” from my radar. Either way, a community of people with whom I had communicated, traded knowledge and ideas suddenly vanished from the world entirely, and I from it. Because DI does not occupy the real world in any tangible sense for me, when I neglected it, it nigh did cease to exist. And likewise, I did not exist to the people who have known me only through it.

This concept got me thinking about the expanse of telecommunications we have in our hands, and what it may mean for real human relationships. Can we define faraway, supposed acquaintances who can vanish from our knowledge at any time (as I did) as “friends”? And, as this post’s title muses, what happens to my online network of psuedobuddies when I leave, or die?

I don’t mean to downplay the potential of online communication. People made due for centuries maintaining meaningful relationships with mere pen-pals, using a far less forgiving medium and time-frame. I think of the letters exchanged between the likes of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, for years upon years, across many miles, maintaining a friendship and respect nearly across the grave, as it turned out. Thus it can clearly …

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The crisis about boys and schools

A recent article in Newsweek describes this national crisis well.  Here's one symptom: "At many state universities the gender balance is already tilting 60-40 toward women."  The problem starts well before college, though: By almost every benchmark, boys across the nation and in every demographic group are falling behind. In…

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So just who are we all talking to, anyway?

I wrote a paper for one of my Master’s classes a couple of weeks ago, integrating what I’d absorbed from two textbooks into pages of my actual life.   Shortly after I got it back from my professor, a friend and I were discussing this very blog, which led to a discussion of philosophizing in general.   He lamented how lately, he’s seen an awfully lot of writing overwrought with words at the expense of actual ideas.   This guy is an intellectual himself, a prolific writer and thinker, so his comment gave me pause. 

As I’ve read for this particular graduate Communication class, I’ve worried more than once that some in my degree program seem to overstate the obvious.  I love taking a fragment of seemingly mundane human interaction, analyzing its details and its place in our lives to parse from it a deeper understanding of our connectedness, yet I can’t shake the underlying fear that many would meet our research with a big, “So what?”

I thought I’d share some thoughts from this particular paper here, and ask for the feedback of the ‘blog’s readership.  Based on responses I’ve received to previous pieces and the responses I’ve read here to the writing of others, I believe this audience falls toward the thinking end of the spectrum.  There.  I’ve laid out a blanket compliment.  Be nice when you pick me apart, then, please??

Here goes:

Drama unfolds around us continually, though the mundane events of daily life often blur into methodical sameness …

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Tragedy and Farce: how the American media lost its way

I was recently provided with a copy of Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sells Wars, Spend Election’s, and Destroy Democracy, by John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney. Written in 2005, this book is a great way to get an historical perspective on the state of journalism in America.  “How bad have things gotten?” you might ask.

Our media system has become so dysfunctional that it repeatedly shows its willingness to stenographically report the Bush administration’s spin as truth “while rejecting expressions of reality as manifestations of partisanship that must be balanced with more spin.”  (Page 4) The authors write that the media is a “lumbering and lazy media” that is ideally suited to the whims of “Karl Rove and the thousands of other paid liars.”

Our media system is so bad that American political discourse has become “meaningless.”  There is no better way to exemplify the bankruptcy of the media system than the March 2003 press conference at which George Bush was not challenged by anyone in the Washington press corps with regard to the preemptive war he was about to launch.  The members of the press “asked him not a single probing question about the flimsy case that had been made for war, nor its likely costs, nor about anything akin to an exit strategy.”

The authors argue that our elite reporters no longer show passion for truth, but rather passion only for access to those who wield power.  Reporters for major media outlets have become …

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Want to adopt a baby from China? Not if you are an old, depressed, sick, poor, alcoholic, amputee, criminal, fat Jehovah’s Witness!

My wife and I adopted our two wonderful daughters from China on two separate occasions, in 1999 and 2001.  We very much appreciated the way that the Chinese orphanages took good care of our daughters.  When we traveled to China to meet our daughters, we were treated well by the many Chinese people we met who ran China’s adoption program.  Everything was straight-forward and as we expected.  I also cannot say enough good things about Children’s Hope International, the American adoption agency we used.

Throughout the adoption process one bit of irony repeatedly occurred to my wife and I: We had to be highly scrutinized before being allowed to adopt.  The Chinese government (and our own agency) wanted to make certain that we were going to be good parents.  My wife and I sometimes commented to each other that absolutely anyone is qualified to have a biological child, whereas people trying to adopt were treated with suspicion.  To be approved for adoption, we had to produce our arrest records, medical records, recommendation letters and a home study.

We periodically get newsletters from Children’s Hope.  This month’s letter includes the current requirements for adopting a child from China. Interesting stuff.  In fact, the requirements are much stricter than they were a few years ago:

  • China bases eligibility on each person’s age. If one spouse is under 30 or one spouse is over 55, the couple is not eligible to adopt.

Families are not eligible to adopt if any of the following …

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