from wikipedia

I heard a loud sound like a car horn, and turned around to realize I’d been standing in the middle of a parking lot without a clear idea of for how long. After having left the grocery store I remembered hearing the sound of an incoming text, and without thinking I’d stopped to dig my phone out of my purse and respond. Then, out of habit, I checked my email. There I found a couple notifications from facebook, but before I’d finished reading the sound startled me and I realized I was standing in the middle of the road. I scurried out of the way and realized for the first time how strange it is that tech savvy people these days live lives which are physically divided– real life and virtual life. I was cognizant for the first time of the look that must have been on my face, and ever since then I’ve been seeing that look everywhere, like their real-life body has been put on pause while they live their life in another world. I’ve grow a nasty habit of staring at these people and wondering if they know how strange they look.

Ever since watching Lain, one of the most mind-screwy animes ever conceived, I’ve been having these troubling thought experiments about the meaning of online existence. For example: lets say a person lives a profound and influential life in the virtual world but nowhere else. They never leave their home, never meet people in person, but online they accomplish a great many things. This is a though experiment, but certainly not impossible, and becoming more possible all the time. Can that person be said to have lived a meaningful life? I suppose that question is fundamentally unanswerable as the definition of a meaningful life is subjective, but it’s a fun question to ask.
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Late one night I was up around 2 am and realized I’d not yet written a response to an important email. Later, when I was reading back over it, I realized it wasn’t a bad piece of writing. Narcissistic as I am, I decided to share it here:

Hi Todd,

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