So here we are, each before his / her screen, in our respective space and time, interfacing. And, regardless of what’s going on around and within said screen, at this moment we are all unquestionably alone. Our attention is focused. There is a vague, pale glow on our fingertips and nails, on the points of our noses, and reflecting in our eyes – and there is something hypnotic about it all.

In a different tab, we can instantly view a running stream of information on the lives of our friends and enemies, and perhaps more than a couple of strangers. This stream is updated with the latest, up to the minute changes, comprising an easy to access and easy to read dossier of private life fragments, the likes of which would likely have taken the FBI days, months, or years of hard field work to compile only a few short years ago. I suppose now all they’ve got to do is “friend” us and then double check when needed. But then, it’s not like we have anything to hide, right?

At any moment, and at will, we can access any manner of entertainment or diversion, from the purely escapist romp, to the most extreme or lurid erotic fantasy – and anything in between, of course, good and bad and neutral. Our minds can walk down the streets of foreign cities – at the very least the vivid photographic imprints thereof – or through entirely imaginary spaces – we can talk to complete strangers under the veil of almost total anonymity, and we can read the entire works of William Shakespeare, if we so choose.

And, of course, many of us, very much like yours truly, see the need to add to the cacophony, to send forth a burst of ourselves, little thoughts and opinions here and there, with the illusion or hope that those bits and pieces, in the grand scheme of things, actually “matter.” We communicate, or try to, in this very exciting and technically brilliant world, for the same reasons anyone ever does or ever did, whether they were read/heard or not.

And while we do, undoubtedly communicate, and while I am hardly a Luddite, and would not stoop to blindly condemn this new (but rapidly aging) cyberworld so many of us live in, we cannot claim that this ghostly meeting of ours is without its sour side. Take me, for example, sitting here, hammering out these words. The first question is, perhaps, the ubiquitous “why?”. The “what?” follows as almost an afterthought. The “how,” of course, is for the skilled engineers to know. And then it comes around and back again to the “why?” and the many derivations thereof (“for whom?”, “for what?”, and etc.).

And while writing is nearly always a painful and solitary act, writing in this ether-world (surrounded by dislocated bits and pieces of one’s “social life” suspended as silent, fleshless pixels) can, on occasion, give rise to brand new species of loneliness and wonder. And none of it, of course, is new. It started perhaps with the Television, and perhaps with the radio, and perhaps with the printing press. It has just never been this “interactive” before all this “Social Media” stuff came about, and hence has never been nearly as immersive. And, most importantly, never has this much “data” been generated at such a rapid rate.

All this, as well as the pros and cons, has been discussed at length and with a great deal more insight, elsewhere. All of the above is merely a preface to a simple observation. The inner world is expanding outward in a strange new way – our minds are either sprouting active proxies or leaving behind shells of attempted communication in cyberspace. Wastelands and gardens are forming. Memes are emerging and mutating and dying. Every minute, this brave new world expands and explodes anew. Every day it is different. And, though we have all this power at our fingertips, that entire monstrous and fascinating world, we are still just as lonely as we’ve ever been.