Memories and Images

Sometimes I wonder what has happened to others.

It used to be quite a mystery, of course: people would leave our own circle of living, leave our own geographic area, and then would disappear off the face of our known earth.  Perhaps we would hear of them from a friend of a friend or a relative, but they had effectively moved beyond our own orbit.  We might picture where they were or what they were doing, how their lives had gone.

Now, of course, we have the Internet.  And Facebook and Linked In and 40 other ways to keep in touch with other people.  And yet, I still find myself wondering what has happened to others.

Oh, I can find them of course.  They will pop up as soon as you search for them.  But all it is now is a carefully crafted image, what one wants everyone else to see.

To be fair, I do this as well.  My "On-line presence" (sounds so official) is in some ways very different from the way I would present myself in my more personal space.  Part of it is essentially image management - after all, everybody (including your company) can find you now.

But the mystery is gone, in a way.  No longer does one wonder where those others are or what they have done.  It can easily be found out - or rather, the image can be found out.    But them, who they were or who they are, has become submerged beneath that image.

Which makes it sadder, in a way.  Before one had to imagine.  Now one has the outer image without the core.

It strikes me as strange that in this world of interconnected technology, we find ourselves more isolate dfrom such memories than we perhaps ever thought possible.