I loved this book. and I warn you, it may be disturbing for some. It is very well written, modern... with the sincere confusion of people finding their ways, especially when they reach that middle age... and want to question everything all over again, relationships being one of those items.
Experimenting with my camera and web cam, I noticed the delay in my speech. And how my image, reflected on a computer screen and mediated over and over, resembled that approach to online intimacy. We are close but distorted. We can develop a sense of intimacy because the natural physical barriers allow us to open up to strangers, and yet, we are pixels away, hiding behind the comfort of a screen and a cheap web cam.
These thoughts remind me of two modern thinkers located perhaps at two opposite ends of the spectrum. One is Canadian educator Marshall McLuhan and "the medium is the message", meaning, as stated by Wikipedia, that "the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived" (you go figure that one)and the other one is Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek (this goes for my friend E)who talks about the impersonal forms of modern life, where we get to "experience" things without their essence... many products are deprived of their "malignant property": coffee without caffeine, cream without fat, beer without alcohol... and virtual sex without sex!
Tip of the day: we may want to revisit the term intimacy but especially its actual sense of existence.
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