Sincerity and Technology

Dear Fellow Bloggers:

Last class we discussed the decline of formal conventions involved in writing a letter with the advent of email, instant messaging and text messaging, one of which is including "Sincerely," at the end of a letter.  Well, I happened upon a very interesting article about the sincerity of contemporary poetry in the February issue of Poetry.  And it got me thinking about sincerity on the internet.  In this article, the author quotes Robert Frost, whom I sincerely hope you are all familiar with. 

"There is such a thing as sincerity.  It is hard to define but it is probably nothing more than your highest liveliness escaping from a succession of dead selves.  Miraculously.  It is the same with illusions.  Any belief you sink into when you should be leaving it behind is an illusion.  Reality is the cold feeling on the end of the trout's nose."

I just love that phrase: "your highest liveliness escaping from a succession of dead selves.  Miraculously."  Now miracles are something that technology will never understand, and I think Frost's phrasing here is perfect for our discussion of things like facebook and myspace--you can never be sincere in an artificial space because such a page is a veritable collection of corpses, of "dead selves."  The moment you've posted something posted something on facebook, it's already dead to you, isn't it?  It's certainly not your highest liveliness--how could it be?  It's just pixels or words--nothing real.  Also, I think Borgman would appreciate Frost saying that "reality is the cold feeling on the end of trout's nose."  Definitely natural information.

The internet severely lacks sincerity.  Everything that springs from the internet is a mockery of itself--the internet itself is one of the favorite things to poke fun at--not that it doesn't deserve it.  It's really hard for me, personally, to take anyone very seriously who says "lulz" even occasionally.  As far as I can see, the internet makes a parody of everything: I don't think I've ever witnessed a tragedy involving the internet.  Even things that were once tragedies become parodies on the internet.

Sincerely,

Hank Backer