Well I have to say I am really intrigued by this set of online articles, for a multitude of reasons. Starting with the most irreverant, I happen to know the town of Pinedale pretty well. I am familiar with the Bar Cross Ranch and if I sat and thoguht about it long enough I could probably even put a face to the writer's name. The only thing I am not sure of is what he does/did to earn the title cyberspace cadet. Is that a job title? A name for people who are ambivalent about the internet? A reference to great works of goodness he has performed for Deadheads and other online communities? Wish I knew.

Still this article struck a chord with me, particularly when he brought up prana. I get what he is saying about small communities, having grown up in one in Wyoming myself. I liked the idea that we all start in someplace or time we call home. We don't realise how much it means until we no longer have it. Then we spend the rest of our lives sorting through fascimilies, fighting for the dreams of memories of what we called home, and watching as each new place, however intriguing, falls short of the expectations of that first home, even later incarnations of the same space. I'd say that is an archtypal experience for people. That particular journey can be found in quabbalistic theories, Christian spirituality, and is somewhere near the crux of the Bhuddist religion.

Then there is the fact that reading this article gives me a better understanding of what I am wanting to learn and understand within the confines of my final project. Yes, I am interested in collaborative writing but in the sense that my blog space and my game in chat space create community and whether or not that community effectively communicates anything beyond its own self interests. Is there prana? Is there meaningful connection or are we all just a bunch of floating cyberidentities that live incomplete lives in the computer generated world out of a need for connection that real life no longer offers in ideal quantity?

I also share the understanding that I'd rather have real friends, people I can see and touch and smell and trust by their appearance in my life that they are honest in that identity, than friends I only know through cyberspace. Words on a screen don't do it for me. Or perhaps they do too much. When I think about the second article we read and the issues it brought up in regards to identity with the web, I realise that yes, Hayley, whom I've never met in real life, is one of the few females I know that I trust, becuase she poses no threat. Yet I've only known her through IM. Who knows she could be male in this real world. Does it matter? Does it matter who anyone is here because I know her there and that is the person I trust. A personality defined in lines of text. When all of us are readin each other's profiles and interpreting ourselves throguh the words of others, what does that mean? What does it do to the idea of self and the idea of shared experience? I am tired of asking question. I'd be interested in your thoughts.