One Planet, Many Worlds...

OK... I don't know if it's just me, or if others are also encountering this. I'm finding when I mention my blog, or twittering, or my Cyber Twin, to people at work (the only people I'm around, since I can't avoid them), they back away from me slowly, as if I might be dangerous, while waving their hands around in front of them, as if to disperse a bad smell. They also tend to have an upset look on their faces, something like this:

So, I'm becoming more aware that there are those who have online 'lives' and those for whom the term 'online lives' holds no meaning at all and is actually a bit disturbing. It's as if we are living in different realities, side by side, here on the same planet. But the online life is becoming more and more 'real' to me. And the value of it is becoming more clear as well.

Take 'Twitter', for instance.... it's an difficult concept to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it. Most say, 'Well, WHY would anyone want to do that?". So, I was pleased to read what Grace D. wrote on her blog tonight about the value of Twitter. She made a tweet on Twitter, saying that she had a new post on her blog, so I went on over. And Lo and Behold, she was writing about what happened on Twitter tonight- how the info about the earthquake in Mexico was first sent around the world THERE. Not on internet news pages, not on TV news. No, on Twitter. You can go to her blog and read it for yourself. I think it's pretty interesting.

What I'm sensing with all of the online connections, though things like Twitter, is a matrix of connections that is weaving itself between people all across the globe who would never meet in 'real' life, or even know of each other's existence. For instance, some fellow from China started 'following' me right after I joined twitter. Now 20 people, from all different places, are following me. And I am 'following' over 30 people. I love this. And I can't really explain WHY I love it... Why I like to read what someone 1,000 or 5,000 miles away is having for dinner, or what clever or goofy thing their kid did today. Maybe the attraction is the same as for reading about other people's lives in books, or watching it on TV. Except this is REAL people, giving us their own up to the minute peeks into their lives. Anyway, what I do see is that this web of internet connections is sort of a Cyber Mimic of the REAL energetic web of connections that actually does exist, mostly outside of our awareness, between all humans. Cool stuff!