Laptop Oracles: Stand Your Ground

Be consistent, even if others don’t understand.
In a very few years, we shall have ubiquitous video communications over most of the earth. Cell phones are nearly there now. But it’s not a question of hardware; it’s a question of access to bandwidth. Localized economics and personal poverty won’t prevent the presence of network access, but may make it awfully expensive for anything but the most primitive level of textual transmission.
The heart and soul of the Networked Civilization remains plain text. We cannot easily transmit all the hundreds of visual and auditory cues which provide nuance in a conversation. You can easily presume those who know you well will deduce some measure of such things, but the vast majority of the Net will need more overt clues.
We all have read talented writers who can draw you into their world quickly. While much of this can be learned, it’s not essential for the Network. This is not simply a style issue, but a matter of consciousness. Aside from issues arising from the various cultural and language contexts, the fully civilized Netizen must grasp the necessity of presenting however much of oneself as can be transmitted over the network, within the context of the protocols in use.
Machines already process and transmit facts. To be human and networked with other humans requires transmitting the self. On the level of the network itself, the machines can identify each other, but for one human to recognize another requires something of substance, something machines may never quite understand. Even if they do someday understand, it will be an emulation of humanity, not a uniquely machine personality. Machines on the network facilitate reaching out to touch other humans; there is no other reason to have the Internet.
You can’t reach into someone else’s head and make them understand. You can only do so much to put yourself in reach of another human. You can’t make people believe about you what you would prefer. You will for that person ever only be what they imagine. There is only one thing you can do. The single greatest factor in Networked Civilization is consistency. Wrapped up in the whole business of trust, secrecy and openness is the necessity you wrap your own head around who you can imagine you are, followed by how best to transmit that within the medium.
We use the term “character” which comes to us from the art of typography. The word indicates something which makes one thing distinguishable from another. To have character is to be not simply unique, but recognizable. Even with the radical appearance changes of someone like Lady Gaga, there has to be an underlying character or she can’t sell albums, since it depends heavily upon branding. Someone amorphous is no one. Translate that to the Networked Civilization, and we cast aside all the visuals and sounds, and we have only the ability to express the self in text. To be a true Netizen starts with not simply a writing style, but a consistency so others can make sense of who you are. Your textual expression is who you are.
The fastest way to find yourself rejected from the Networked society is to be inconsistent. Not simply in style of expression and vocabulary, but in content. It naturally requires you know your own mind. We expect children to be flighty and variable, because they haven’t learned enough to nail down what matters to them. They are still learning to participate in whatever “civilization” exists for them. A great many adults, upon first using the Net, appear childlike and annoying. They have entered another civilization, and it’s foreign to them. With varying degrees of patience we Netizens try to help or simply avoid them. Their presence is for many a disruption.
Moving forward into the Networked Civilization will be greatly blessed by a self-conscious recognition of what it takes. Your place in such a civilization depends entirely on knowing what you really believe and doing to your best to state your belief. Stand behind them; don’t toss them like a grenade and run away. It matters not what others think of your beliefs or of you. What matters more than anything else is character, the consistent presentation which can be recognized by those involved. Godliness in the Networked Civilization is character, a recognizable presence which comes across in the most fundamental mode of communication of plain text.
Know yourself and how to present.