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Comment by SourPatch | Hacker News Reader

"It is my firm belief, and I say this as a dictum, that all these tools now at our disposal, these things part of this explosive evolution of means of communication, mean we are now heading for an era of solitude. Along with this rapid growth of forms of communication at our disposal — be it fax, phone, email, internet or whatever — human solitude will increase in direct proportion." -Werner Herzog

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That's an apt quotation... that you posted to the Internet to be seen by anonymous others who don't know you.

meta.

Thanks to the internet I can work anywhere in the world. Thanks to HN, Reddit and my RSS reader I can keep up with the cutting edge of my profession whereever I go. Thanks to email, jabber, skype and facebook I can travel the world without losing touch with my friends and family. Thanks to couchsurfing.org I've made friends all over the world and experienced dozens of different cultures. If the internet is making you lonely, you're doing it wrong.

I don't understand the obsession with working anywhere in the world. Yes, you can... and? Do you really want to be traveling all the time? If so, that's a good thing to have... but I just can't sympathize. I like to travel, but it's also nice to feel home.

> Do you really want to be traveling all the time?

Personally, yes. I'm aware that this is unusual. Maybe I will settle down one day but the few times I have tried so far I have experienced what I can only describe as cabin fever.

> ... it's also nice to feel home

I suppose that I do have the same instinct to seek out shelter/security/safety, manifested in an irrational fondness for my tent and the few other belongings I carry with me.

Fair enough. Enjoy traveling!

Solitude and loneliness are not the same thing. Some people like their solitude and are probably happy that alternate means to communicate empower them to enjoy more of it.

(My attitude seems to be evolving into: "Don't friggin' call me and expect me to drop everything to chat with you. Shoot me an email and I will get back to you within a reasonable period of time without dropping everything like it's some crisis." And I'm a former phone-junkie.)

> Some people like their solitude and are probably happy that alternate means to communicate empower them to enjoy more of it.

It's not just communication but the ability to easily keep track of where people are in the world and to coordinate meetings and shared holidays. Facebook is particularly good for keeping in touch with old friends and acquaintances because of the contextual information it supplies. I saw recently that a friend I haven't seen in years is spending a month in Thailand and I arranged to change my travel plans so that I would be passing through during the same period. We weren't close enough friends that we would still be in touch if it wasn't for those kinds of coincidental connections.

I also meet a lot of new people through couchsurfing.org and various expat sites. Couchsurfing is particularly interesting because its goal is explicitly to create friendships between people of different cultures. I would probably be much more lonely when traveling without it.

Reading this book The Possibility of an Island which postulates the same, though through a more socio-religious angle rather than technological.

What do you think of it?

I've read a few books by Houellebecq; they seem to get more and more depressing.

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