ISOLATION John Lennon John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band Capitol : 1970 [Buy It] Last winter I published a

ISOLATION John Lennon John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band Capitol : 1970 [Buy It] Last winter I published a limited-edition book/box that lamented the death of letter-writing, and when it came out, my wife sent a copy to Yoko Ono, one of her heroes, who she thought might appreciate an elegant object designed to collect and display worry over the lack of connection in modern humanity. We didn't hear back and after a while we assumed that it had been tossed. Maybe Yoko even ululated as she threw it away. Then about a week ago, we received a card from her office. accommodation special rates amsterdam The woman who wrote the enclosed letter apologized for the delays but explained that due to Ms. Ono's practice of answering all requests personally, response can sometimes take a while. I thought about the card, and the woman, and the message created by one to fit inside the other, during Beatles Week, which peaked this past Wednesday in an orgy of product release and rerelease (Rock Band, remasters, Magical Mystery Tour-themed accommodation special rates amsterdam Halloween costumes--buy accommodation special rates amsterdam now!). I admired Yoko's decision to thank me for a book about letter-writing with a hand-signed card, and I didn't think that she was either ironizing or mocking the original work. I wondered whether John Lennon would have still been interested in the handwritten artifact if he was still alive, or if he would have been swept into the vortex of technology. I wondered because that's all you can do with John Lennon these days: wonder. Somehow, by this morning, my feelings of admiration for the two of them had evolved into a need to articulate my particular hatred of the Internet. I am probably not the first person to say this, and I hope I am not the last, but the Internet is punching humanity in the stomach, and humanity is just standing there and taking it. In New York, at least in the mediacentric part of it, there is, increasingly, only one way to know that you exist, though there are many iterations accommodation special rates amsterdam of that one way. Existence is contingent upon electronic ink. If you want to know you are real, write a blog post. Use your Twitter account. Change your Facebook status. Or, if that seems too self-promotional, get someone else writing or using or changing to link to you. There have been studies this last month that online technology is harming the ability of people, particularly young people, to communicate face-to-face. This seems maddeningly obvious, and it also seems to soften the blow. The fact is that the Internet, for all its theoretical promise as a storehouse of information and a network that links people in disparate places (Iranian democratic activists with interested American observers, for example), has become most noteworthy as a drug peddler peddling the worst of all drugs, fame. People are growing addicted to getting noticed, to collecting friends on social networking sites, to heedlessly dumping into the filthy cesspool of opinion that's going to break its tank and flood everything. Reserve, once a virtue, is now seen as invisibility, which means that it's not seen at all. The addictive effects of fame are worsened accommodation special rates amsterdam by two facts. First, it's happening earlier and earlier to people who are less and less equipped to survive it. It's happening accommodation special rates amsterdam to kids, who somehow learn that it's okay--and even desirable--to broadcast accommodation special rates amsterdam their opinions, their images, and their inner lives to a world that, in the vast majority of cases, has no use for them except as fuel for the engine of distraction. And second, the fame that everyone is skinpopping isn't even the pure stuff--it's cut with irony and impermanence and venality. None of this is new save the speed and efficiency of the delivery mechanism. What are the consequences? I refuse to list them. I may not be capable of imagining them. But I feel certain they're not, on balance, good. This isn't a reasoned argument. accommodation special rates amsterdam It's an emotional response. This isn't an attack on any individual accommodation special rates amsterdam endeavor. There are of course plenty of blogs, accommodation special rates amsterdam tweets, and statuses that are hurting no one. Rather, it's a broad reaction to a host of minor infractions. I've seen them this week, this month, this year. People worry that they're not famous enough because no one's writing about them. They worry that they're not having thoughts because those thoughts aren't being expressed in full view of the world. They worry that they'll vanish and as a result they go all-out with the flightless plumage. (But then again, they're not to blame They're only human, a victim of the insane.) Damn you to hell, Internet. As always you can find us at moistworks.com.