This place has seen much "self-reflexion" of late, along with entries about a couple of women demanding difficult judgement calls, and some fine reading last night provoked even more of it: a new meeting point of behavioural notions for me, and as ever, I hope, of much wider interest.
I've written almost more than enough about Sunday's incident with the Kid's mum, Catherine, which surprised me as an unprovoked aberration, most uncharacteristic from a woman who has much changed, as do we all, over the years and whom I like very much and respect.
But she's explained what she herself describes as an "outburst" in a letter where she also generously grants me "all latitude to protest". In fact, I have no protesting to do and indeed go along with some of her observations.
Such anger as I felt was almost as short-lived as my immediate response in slamming that car door; I'll not do her the disservice of quoting her here, since everybody has their own "gut reactions" as the past year has taught me once and for all. Hers include a "malaise" regarding the Internet and my use -- or might she say "abuse"? -- of it.
Many people still see the Web as little more than a research and communications tool and remain very uneasy about what's it done and is still doing as far more than that, a recent technological development with far-reaching social implications.
These implications, when you think of it, are almost too recent a social phenomenon for anybody to absorb, analyse and, above all, forecast. The Net, as a daily reference point for ever-growing millions of people in the general public, is scarcely a decade old.
Britain's QE II, the monarch in person, sent her first email as way back as 1976, but the Internet Society (ISOC) wasn't founded until 1991, at around the start of four crazy years which saw the Net mushroom beyond academic, scientific and military circles. The best timeline for all this, from the start to today, is the one by Robert H'obbes' Zakon (at Zakon.org).
Most of what Catherine wrote is between ourselves, but she raises a couple of questions: the importance people accord to appearances (which, in my case, is generally known to be no more than a social minimum); and more essentially, the nature of and the prominence we individually give to what socially passes for "reality". I mean the workaday world of our lives, loves, jobs and acquaintances as contrasted with the growing importance more and more brains -- from psychologists and sociologists to writers, graphic artists and philosophers -- accord to "virtual realities".
Regarding the latter, my ex-wife is understandably alarmed that I've come to give it far too big a place in my life, presumably at the risk of divorcing my self from any kind of real world as she perceives it. This development -- which, frankly, I've seen far more manifest and indeed worrying in several other people: a new channel of alienation which has further cut some of them off from, say, Catherine's world -- sets off frantic alarm bells in her mind.
I'm at a midpoint in what is proving to be gruellingly hard work with Dr. 'Mind Juggler' F., for whom my respect and admiration strengthen with each session.
I understand what her next step will be, and -- as "homework" -- took what could have been some rather embarrassing time out this morning to 'phone a bunch of well-placed AFP colleagues as well as friends, seeking the most honest responses they were prepared to give me regarding progress in what the doctors began to call my "social reintegration" several months into the onset of the Condition (my partially psycho-somatic serious gut disorder).
Reassuringly, after two or three weeks of flak fired my way from various quarters, the answers were invariably positive, and far more so than I'd dared expect given recent emotional upheavals.
What they're waiting for at the Factory, it would seem, is for me to get a bit more speed back, less shyness in my renewed personal interactions -- and the return of my sense of humour, joking and irreverence in all its awful glory!
Professional head-shrinkers take note:
If I've taken a particular liking to the Mind Juggler, it's only partly because I happen to score highly on her scale as a "social animal": a rebellious one, perhaps, and a hater of most group activity, but no less a moderately well-oiled cog in the mechanism of society.
We get on primarily because she's only the second practising psy-anything of rather too many I've had dealings with to treat me not as a "patient" or "in-valid" case, but lucidly -- one the preliminary sessions were over -- as a "normal person". The last shrink to do that, seven years ago, had to withdraw -- because I reminded him, he confessed uncomfortably, far too much of himself and his own problems at the time! Moreover, she's not interested in "schools" or "god-games", finding exploration infinitely better than lectures.
The biggest "truth" to hit home about AFP since I resumed work at the Factory is that -- perhaps like most big organisations -- the place functions and survives precisely because of the vital day-to-day social and professional interaction among journalists and technicians. And not because of its top management. While we've all known far worse than the current bunch, a lot of them still live on other planets.
French media reports sometimes dub the news agency a ship riding stormy waters. If that metaphor's true, then I can only publicly write that it's one which sails rather more successfully when most of those on the bridge and the upper decks leave the workings of the engine-room well alone! The institution will still be paying the price of previously incompetent senior officers for years to come...
But that's just an aside.
Last night, I almost finished what I wanted of one my "library volumes" taken out at the Safari Bookshelf (O'Reilly - a place which gets five more stars, by the way, for the courteous way they have just dealt, in well under 24 hours, with a customer service problem of mine).
At the end of the book, "accidental revolutionary" Eric Raymond's superb overview of "open source" matters in 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar' (Open Resources abstract; later revised, 2001), this seeker of originality (Linux Today) makes some most interesting points about the psychology of a hacker.
His Appendix I includes some good "dos and don'ts", along with some "points of style" far removed from mere appearances in the domain of the flesh and its appareil:
"...to be a hacker, you have to enter the hacker mindset. There are some things you can do when you're not at a computer that seem to help. They're not substitutes for hacking (nothing is) but many hackers do them, and feel that they connect in some basic way with the essence of hacking.
- Learn to write your native language well. Though it's a common stereotype that programmers can't write, a surprising number of hackers (including all the best ones I know of) are able writers.
- Read science fiction. Go to science fiction conventions (a good way to meet hackers and proto-hackers).
- Study Zen, and/or take up martial arts. (The mental discipline seems similar in important ways.)
- Develop an analytical ear for music. Learn to appreciate peculiar kinds of music. Learn to play some musical instrument well, or how to sing.
- Develop your appreciation of puns and wordplay.
The more of these things you already do, the more likely it is that you are natural hacker material. Why these things in particular is not completely clear, but they're connected with a mix of left- and right-brain skills that seems to be important (...)"
Oh Eric, neatly put. Ah, Catherine! Where does this leave us, not just me, you and our generation, but the Kid, poor soul?
Marianne fits more than half of that profile already; I, for my part, given a renewed interest in Zen, as well as the Tao and the good old I Ching, am doomed beyond redemption!
The Mind Juggler's task, to be further pursued in about a couple of hours, has far less to do with helping any social reintegration than giving me a little more assistance with the process of putting my selves back together again, including the revived bits brought back to life during the worst of the Condition and accompanying mental transition my malfunctioning bowel system reflected by way of red alert warning bells.
Worse, now that I have further explored what this means, you might have to consider the option that the Kid has at least the makings, even, of a geek!!
But that's neither as freaky or alarming as it sounds as soon as one opens one's mindset to 'Geek: a definition' as admirably expressed not in your average dictionary but by Craig at 'Ye Olde Foole's Tavern'.
Craig is, like Eric, somebody who makes the crucial web-savvy distinctions between being a hacker and your damned Net nuisance of a "cracker", and a geek and your real social misfit, the "nerd".
All of what Craig says is worth reading for people uncomfortable with the Internet, but he makes two fundamental points high in his definition:
"A geek is someone who spends time being 'social' on a computer. This could mean chatting on irc or icb, playing multi-user games, posting to alt.sex.bondage.particle.physics, or even writing shareware. Someone who just uses their computer for work, but doesn't spend their free time 'on line' is not a geek (...)
[There's rather more to it than that, but also:]
"The unwritten geek credo states that originality and strangeness are good, and that blind conformity and stupidity are unforgivable."
Just as dressing sloppily or seeking out 'ec-centricity' for its own sake, if one has the choice of doing otherwise, are indeed signs of serious social maladjustment.
"A nerd is a person with no social skills, usually obsessed with science or technology (geek is more computer specific). Nerds are known for their pocket protectors, taped glasses, and plaid shirts. Many nerds are also geeks, using the net as a safe screen to hide behind while practicing their social skills," writes Craig, while:
"the term (hacker) is overused in the popular media, and therefore is no longer much used among 'real geeks'. Hacker also has negative connotations related to cracking, or illegally obtaining access to computers and accounts."
As for the integration and understanding of self, while I'm happy to have encountered the Mind Juggler rather late in life, better late than never; and I expect no miracles of our meetings to come.
The multitude of "online adventures" I've had in the past year, as well as a few in the "real world", convince me more than ever that self-realisation -- and especially "waking up" -- are nothing less than lifelong tasks.
I don't think anybody should get too alarmed or upset at the time today's youngsters spend at their computers, given any intelligent parental precautions and sufficient attention to what they're doing.
Such children have simply become fellow makers of an extremely interesting future, where the boundaries between worlds -- what is "real" and what is "virtual" -- have already become as blurred as is daily reflected in the art, literature and film of our times.
There's nothing wrong with having a head in the clouds as long as the feet stay on the ground.
It's still a prospect which scares many people, but in what passes for the "developed world" especially -- and at the risk of serious global social upheavals and conflicts the pathfinders have already begun to consider -- the day is undoubtedly coming when those who are labelled misfits and ill-adjusted will, like it or not, be the increasingly marginalised individuals who are not web-savvy and fear not only what the Internet already is, but what it's likely to become!
6:11:29 PM link 
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