Staying Connected: Paul Weinfield’s Reflections
The problem, as I see it, isn’t that technology is evil, it’s that humans tend to confuse surveillance and connectedness. We think, in other words, that we can make connections with others by acquiring information about them. We hope that if we know where others are at all times, how they look at all times, or what they sound like at all times — somehow we will forge a bond with these beings.
.. Sometimes I marvel as I cross a university quad at the fact that every student seems to be talking to his or her parents. Maybe it’s me, but when I was in college my parents were lucky if they heard from me once a month.
.. Rilke put it as well as anyone when he said, “Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.” If love is the highest form of connection, then it also follows that love and separateness are not opposites. To love, Rilke says, is in fact to protect someone else’s separateness, to keep it from being scrutinized or invaded by our desire to know or possess them.