![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Message To Diane
Oct. 5th, 2015 03:33 pmI have a blocky black smartphone, which I resent because I don't have any interest in doing smartphone things, and all of the functions of the phone seem optimized for someone who likes smartphones. (A reasonable starting point for a designer of smartphones, but nevertheless.) I do like that it's a utilitarian black rectangular prism that seems to hope I won't look at it much and won't notice it if I do. In that way, this phone and I are sympatico, and I feel a certain amount of affection for its hardware even as I'm annoyed by the software (a summary of my entire life as concerns technology).
Anyway, I have this smartphone because Ciro insisted WhatsApp would be critical to my social life, because it's how everybody here communicates. Whether that's true remains to be seen, because I don't know much of anybody here. However, I have embraced WhatsApp as a means of talking to my best friend Valancy, because it is a very effective means of being silly across large distances for zero money, and we are now looking at an 8 hour time difference (but maybe an effective four hour difference, because I am a night owl and she is a lark. As much as I prefer it when we are geographically convenient, I think our body clocks only synch up if we're on opposite sides of a continent.) Last night I sent not only texts, but voice messages, selfies, and some emoticons. In other words, I have done it up in as full a manner as can be smarphoned.
It ocurred to me this morning (middle of the night for her) that, particularly given the black blockiness of the phone, I could start leaving long philosophical voice memos as though this were a pre-internet dictaphone with small magnetic tapes that had to be mailed. In other words, I could become the Agent Cooper to her unseen Diane. The appeal is obvious, but the flaw in such a plan is I'm pretty sure she hasn't seen Twin Peaks and wouldn't particularly like it. (Maybe she has/would? She likes mysteries. And I think liked Mulholland Drive ok. I'm horrible at guessing what people don't like.)
Still: dictaphone. The appeal of using my most contemporary techology as a way to replicate the function of an obsolete technology doesn't need further explanation.
On the subject of time travel, I have made a friend, if it's not too soon to say that about someone you've known for less than a week, who is Italian and lives in the next town over but speaks good English and is excited to have someone to speak English to. I hope I am a little appealing in some other ways, but I'll take it. I can say with fairly good confidence that she's the sort of person I'd like even were it not for the convenience of being able to make myself understood; she's a cheerful and guilelessly nosy family doctor with whom I could happily chat over tea for the next few decades. She reminds me of so many of the people I like it's not worth listing them.
In any case, although she's definitely very happy to live in the town where she lives, where she also grew up and went to school, to the extent that it's astounding to her that I might choose to move someplace on a whim, she did spend two years living in Connecticut when she was a teenager and is wistful for some of the opportunities in America. The America she describes is extremely meritocratic, and if you are smart and work hard, you will be given many chances to succeed; whereas here in Italy, there is still a lot of old-boy network stuff (she didn't know to call it that, that's me) and there are more qualified people than there are positions. I tried to explain (without slamming on the U.S., because I am loyal about not talking smack on the U.S. while overseas) that in fact those are also problems in the U.S., but she won't hear of it. She thinks I have not been in Italy enough to know how totally different the scale is.
Maybe that's true, but I have an alternate theory, which is that she's wistful for 1999 and 2000, when it did seem like the future was thoroughly and permanently bright, before the dotcom crash and the mortgage bust and the banking collapse and the major economic contraction, before endless war and American torture facilities and the resulting anarchy and massive refugee crisis and paramilitarization of U.S. police forces and rise of xenophobia and the Tea Party. I'm wistful for that America too. Perhaps I shall record a musing on the subject using my dictaphone.
Anyway, I have this smartphone because Ciro insisted WhatsApp would be critical to my social life, because it's how everybody here communicates. Whether that's true remains to be seen, because I don't know much of anybody here. However, I have embraced WhatsApp as a means of talking to my best friend Valancy, because it is a very effective means of being silly across large distances for zero money, and we are now looking at an 8 hour time difference (but maybe an effective four hour difference, because I am a night owl and she is a lark. As much as I prefer it when we are geographically convenient, I think our body clocks only synch up if we're on opposite sides of a continent.) Last night I sent not only texts, but voice messages, selfies, and some emoticons. In other words, I have done it up in as full a manner as can be smarphoned.
It ocurred to me this morning (middle of the night for her) that, particularly given the black blockiness of the phone, I could start leaving long philosophical voice memos as though this were a pre-internet dictaphone with small magnetic tapes that had to be mailed. In other words, I could become the Agent Cooper to her unseen Diane. The appeal is obvious, but the flaw in such a plan is I'm pretty sure she hasn't seen Twin Peaks and wouldn't particularly like it. (Maybe she has/would? She likes mysteries. And I think liked Mulholland Drive ok. I'm horrible at guessing what people don't like.)
Still: dictaphone. The appeal of using my most contemporary techology as a way to replicate the function of an obsolete technology doesn't need further explanation.
On the subject of time travel, I have made a friend, if it's not too soon to say that about someone you've known for less than a week, who is Italian and lives in the next town over but speaks good English and is excited to have someone to speak English to. I hope I am a little appealing in some other ways, but I'll take it. I can say with fairly good confidence that she's the sort of person I'd like even were it not for the convenience of being able to make myself understood; she's a cheerful and guilelessly nosy family doctor with whom I could happily chat over tea for the next few decades. She reminds me of so many of the people I like it's not worth listing them.
In any case, although she's definitely very happy to live in the town where she lives, where she also grew up and went to school, to the extent that it's astounding to her that I might choose to move someplace on a whim, she did spend two years living in Connecticut when she was a teenager and is wistful for some of the opportunities in America. The America she describes is extremely meritocratic, and if you are smart and work hard, you will be given many chances to succeed; whereas here in Italy, there is still a lot of old-boy network stuff (she didn't know to call it that, that's me) and there are more qualified people than there are positions. I tried to explain (without slamming on the U.S., because I am loyal about not talking smack on the U.S. while overseas) that in fact those are also problems in the U.S., but she won't hear of it. She thinks I have not been in Italy enough to know how totally different the scale is.
Maybe that's true, but I have an alternate theory, which is that she's wistful for 1999 and 2000, when it did seem like the future was thoroughly and permanently bright, before the dotcom crash and the mortgage bust and the banking collapse and the major economic contraction, before endless war and American torture facilities and the resulting anarchy and massive refugee crisis and paramilitarization of U.S. police forces and rise of xenophobia and the Tea Party. I'm wistful for that America too. Perhaps I shall record a musing on the subject using my dictaphone.
