I don’t know why I’m still up.  Tomorrow is supposed to be a weird day because I’m expecting a delivery and they’ll call me in the morning to tell me what bracket of time they’ll arrive.  But it’s nice because I have to practise a talk for the Friday night meeting.  Which is still a bit disorganized (heck, I’m disorganized) but things will work out.

What I’m wondering about is the extent to which online virtual community goes, when the community is connected outside of the virtual context (in the real world).  The reason why I wouldn’t always call it “the real world” is because even in the virtual world, stuff really does happen.  Thoughts are actually conveyed, and information is truly offered and received.  But yet there is a go-between, the computer/internet, which separates the people in the community.  It is a separation, but also a link; people are connected in astounding ways, but most would recognize the connection as being impersonal.

I think that I am part of a generation of young people who still separate the virtual and the real worlds.  I find that frequently what is said online over a blog, email, or Facebook wall post doesn’t translate into conversation in real life when I meet the person.  There have been many cases when I chat with someone and then forget that I had mentioned it to that person when I see them later.  One example: chatted with someone online.  Asked her about stuff like “how was your Christmas?”  Saw her at Winter Conference and then asked her the same question.  She wonders, “didn’t I tell you about it already?”

I didn’t grow up talking to people online.  When I chat with people on the computer, I think I still have an element in my mind that “the computer told me this” or “I told the computer this”.  It isn’t the idea that “I told you this through the computer”.

The phone is different, for some reason.  You get to hear a voice on the other end, you say something and you are actually feeling like you are “telling them” stuff.  You don’t feel like you are talking at the telephone.  The telephone is still a medium but you don’t have to imagine one’s voice (and yet you are imagining their facial expressions perhaps).

Do you actually sound the way I think you do when I read the words that you type through IM, wall post, or blog?  If I know you real well, perhaps.  If I know you less, then not likely.

But the issue I’m wondering about is this: there is a new generation now growing up, I would argue starting even with those who are in university right now, that likely equates virtual communication with literal communication.  There is no distinction.  They do not feel like they are talking to a computer ever.  But they are unknowingly missing the information conveyed through voice or facial expression.

There is a generation growing up thinking that communication is simply the message, not the meaning of the expression or medium.