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But physical proximity does not reproduce the intellectual closeness, the thought-intimacy, online meetings brought to me. Some of us continue to make an effort to share physical space whenever we can, going so far as trying to meet each other in airports during layovers. Even these opportunities to meet in meat space grow more sporadic as we leave our itinerant lives as graduate students and gather the delightful baggage of families and homes. As much as we treasure sharing proximity, many of us report feeling a peculiar kind of closeness that only makes sense if you have shared it online. Intellectual intimacy: it is the best way I have to describe the feeling of being saturated with Others in conversation, a space of social-epistemic rhetoric. But if you were part of any of our early flame-wars, you'd never mistake it for a utopia — although cyberspace is literally no-place. Even though the original Kairos group was physically separated by thousands of miles, located in dozens of cities and towns spread over two continents, my memories always return to the illusion of proximity created through the strategic use of literacy technology. Next — "Early Web Grammar"
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(Salvo's Story)
Kairos logo circa 2002 ... and beyond? |