I will be changing many of my categories into tags and reorganizing the categories. It will take me some time so please excuse the jumble meanwhile. If you can’t find something after these changes or just want to express your opinion, feel free to comment.

Aloha and have a great night!

They don’t have cell phones, a cordless telephone for their landline, or cable television, though they do own a set with a DVD player to watch the occasional rental. Before, when we’d get into conversations at their house, they would reach for one of an assortment of reference books and encyclopedias to find a certain fact. I remember trying to explain to them what kind of information they could find online if they got a computer, but I would just get a kind smile; no need, they explained gently. And indeed, they were already very well-informed and thoughtful people, even without a computer. Amazing.

Last year, though, they broke down and took in a hand-me-down laptop from a family member because they recognized that their small business would likely benefit from advertising online. It was a big step for them. Another family member on the mainland built a site for them, and I helped out by downloading some pictures to the webmaster, setting up emails, and finding sites to post their link. I also tutored them on the basics of using a computer. I spent many hours the last couple of years teaching myself WordPress.org as well as the myriad ways to connect and gather information online, but I’m not a total geek. I still need help myself sometimes. However I knew enough to get them started – and I mean really get started. Like where the on button is, how to double click a mouse, and what a Google was. 

The first few months I would get phone calls about various pop-ups or gurgles from their desktop, and I would explain which ones to ignore, and which ones to be concerned about, as far as I knew. It was interesting to watch this pair of newborn PC users find their way around. They have asked the most interesting and surprising questions, and were understandably concerned when their computer showed its own brand of intelligence, remembering settings and things about them like where they had gone online. Seeing it through their eyes has been quite enlightening, and not a little frightening when I stopped to think about it. I still hope they will start their own blog some day, because I for one would love to see them spread their knowledge about gardening and sustainable living. But, that is a BIG step for them; they still keep their time online pretty brief, not to mention they are private people, which I can appreciate.

Yin Yang Breadfruit

The most recent question came as unexpected as the rest. What is Twitter?, they asked, curious about the suddenly popular social application. Well, I had to admit, I didn’t really know much about aside from that it was an online chat type of place, that people could use from their cell phones too. I try to sign up for all the places people go online these days, but I hadn’t gotten to that one yet. (I’m still trying to figure out Facebook. I still really don’t get all the hoopla around that one, particularly when it’s common knowledge that the CIA uses it to recruit…and likely for other snorting around as well.) But I was curious too; everyone seems to be Twittering these days, including Barack Obama. In fact the first news of Flight 1549 on the Hudson came from a twitter-er.

So, I signed up, mostly out of curiosity. Add me if you like. I work a full time job too, so I probably won’t be around there much. I’m also not much of a texter, so I probably won’t use my cell phone with it either. But it’s clear that blogging isn’t enough anymore; now there’s microblogging, where people can exchange thoughts in a more rapid-fire and real-time way. On the one hand, I can see that Twitter seems to represent the next stop along the endless quickening of the Internet, this pre-cursor to the noosphere. However, it’s also a bit disconcerting. It’s like Big Brother demanding to know what we’re doing or thinking about every second of the day. Creepy.

Being that it is merely hours before his inauguration, it seemed fun to find Obama on Twitter and add him. His team is known for being very savvy online, and anyway you couldn’t miss the news that his inauguration would be live on Facebook and Twitter, among other sites. Knowing that didn’t ease the strangeness, though, of getting an email today saying he was now following me on Twitter as well. It makes me feel a little self-conscious, even though of course he isn’t personally doing any texting these days, much as he might like too. Recently I noticed a bit of a hubbub about him not wanting to give up his Blackberry when he becomes President, though he will be forced to stop IMing for security reasons. Bummer, dude.

For my computer neophyte friends here in Hawaii, this online, new-tech, real-time social networking is simply unnecessary. For them, communicating with nature, and each other, still takes precedence. I appreciate the fact that when I email them pictures or a link, they don’t always just return the email – they actually CALL me – on the phone! What a concept. They continue to remind me, and us all, of the actual person-to-person relationships we value.

Virtual, relatively anonymous chatter, is a fun side benefit of our new technologies, and I look forward to using them to find more ways to communicate some important concepts to a wider audience. (And occasionally, we do find some real keepers that start out virtual, and become actual, which is always a joy, for there are some really great folks out here. You know who you are. ) But in the end, our real support and survival in the world will come not from virtual sources, but from the actual 3D people in our neighborhoods. It will come from digging in the garden and sharing the bounty, not posting comments online across the globe. Let’s just all make sure we have a nice balance of both.

That said, I think I’ll post a brief note on my Twitter. And then, I’ll give my friends a call, and maybe go by to check out the garden and see if the starfruit is ripe. They’re my favorite.

• Great audio clip of Bill Hicks on the Elite who govern our world from behind the scenes.   On that note, Aftermath News has an interesting article about the Live Earth concerts and a possible manipulation of our good intentions from David de Rothschild.

• More on the possibility that at least some cancers could be the result of a nutritional deficiency.  Awhile back I suggested we all start eating our apple seeds to be sure we get enough “Vitamin B17″; lately I’ve heard talk about Vitamin D being more helpful than previously thought – both against cancer and possibly also autism.  This nutrient is most readily absorbed from the sun through the skin, but note that most sunscreens block this process.  The good news is all we really need is 15-20 minutes a day out in the sun.

• The dead seabirds being found along the Atlantic coast led me to wonder if it’s connected to the increasing dead zones in the world’s oceans.

• In Hawaii, an “Octosquid” was discovered right here on the Big island; scientists are baffled at the previously unknown creature.   Also Kilauea’s Pu’u O’o vent seems to be quietly sputtering back to life, though far below levels previous to its hiccup on June 17; here are updates and here is a cool webcam of the crater.

• For  updates on all the crazy weather, floods, droughts, fires, freak storms and other calamaties, add The Great Red Comet to your reader.

• Always interested in advancements in teleportation technology.

• “New” fears over aspartame?  C’mon, people, despite what the FDA says, there’s no reason to take a chance.  Throw away the diet soda; aspartame is already banned from children’s foods in Europe.

• Who said money doesn’t fall from the sky?  It’s happened twice in the past few days, once in Germany and again in Tokyo.

• Do you hear clicking noises?

]]> http://surfingthetao.com/2007/07/08/notes-from-the-surf-v/feed/ 3 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ http://surfingthetao.com/2007/06/05/notes-from-the-surf-ii/ http://surfingthetao.com/2007/06/05/notes-from-the-surf-ii/#comments Wed, 06 Jun 2007 05:36:35 +0000 Angela http://surfingthetao.com/2007/06/05/notes-from-the-surf-ii/

• It turns out that the father-in-law of the man infected with a treatment-resistant strain of TB who got on an airplane last month happens to be a tuberculosis specialist at the CDC. Coincidence?

• In my recent post about a Cosmic Perturber I mentioned the work of researcher Burak Eldem, who believes the cycle for Nibiru is 3661 years (and that it’s coming around again in 2012). That number also surfaced as the approximate age of a ghost forest in Oregon. Weird, right?

• Do you know about Cruithne, an asteroid in a bizarre horseshoe-shaped orbit around our sun, also sometimes referred to as “Earth’s second moon”?

• May I just note the irony that Russian President Vladimir Putin “obliquely” compared US foreign policy to the Third Reich in a speech last month? Now there are even rumors of a new Cold War-type chill settling in again. Gog or Magog, anyone?

• Researching the Vatican-Planet X link I found this site which contains a lot of links about supposed disinformation agents, particularly involving the Jesuits. It’s all very Da Vinci Code-y.

• Jake Kotze and his blog, The Brave New World Order, have given me a lot to ponder. His concept of synchromysticism is intriguing; great videos too.

• The first known Category-5 hurricane (cyclone) to churn up the Arabian Sea is headed for Oman and then straight into Iran. Tropical Cyclone Gonu is being called extreme, unusual and rare. Jim Andrews over at AccuWeather.com said, “I can say with confidence that this forecaster has never seen the likes of this.” As if gas prices weren’t high enough already…Hmm…what was that thing about weather modification and weather wars, and didn’t I hear a rumor about war with Iran?

However this rapid advancement can also mean that you can do something on one site that you can’t do yet on another.  Frustration at Blogger led me to WordPress and I’m happy to find some things are easier there; on the other hand, since I’m not into CSS yet (hey, I can find HTML code now and know where to put it, that’s saying a lot for me!) I went back and decided I liked some of the things about Blogger too.  Maybe I’ll just keep them both for awhile and see which one works out to be better.  I’m still learning and I like the different options and people on all of them.  But between my pages on Blogger, WordPress, Myspace, Zaadz, Vox, Tribe; even experimented with Freewebs just because I could; and now there’s stuff like tag clouds, del.icio.us, Digg it, Technorati, Open ID, and the various feed readers – as a neophyte it can be difficult to absorb it all.  But – also a lot of fun.  Here’s to surfing, dudes!