I'm seated here in front of the cafe window looking out onto the intersection in one of those semi-gentrified character neighbourhoods that is common to any urban setting in North America.
I just bought a laptop and was anxious to try it out at a wireless cafe. I thought that it would free me up from the sense of isolation I feel when I do my online business at home but it's not that dramatic a change from sitting in my room confined to the gaze of the monitor. The difference is that this feels much more "public" and "performative." In fact, I feel alot more self-conscious and a lot less low key than I had hoped. There's a bit of a fashionable "show" aspect to all of this that makes me a bit uncomfortable. On the other hand, it's about as close as I can get to being openly engaged in my surround. I'm plugged in without being hidden away in a room, I can be totally immersed in some online activity and then look up and immediately observe -- almost partake in -- the flux and energy of the street. There are two young women next to me -- one is giving the other a tutorial on downloading music. They are very involved in this, so much so that setting and place seem incidental to their concentrated discussion about using Limewire. They are as connected as they are disconnected it would seem.
I observe the pure physics of the intersection in front of me -- cyclists veering around S.U.V.'s, the young and defiant striding across on a red to show their disdain for rules, the shifting, gliding confluence of traffic and pedestrians all in a constant motion. Every few minutes the Skytrain rumbles past above it all as if in a timed interval to this orchestration of humans and cars.
Attractive collegiate women are escorted by their swaggering, primally-charismatic, male companions. Here in this intersection of reality, the rules never change. A predictable set of relationships steadily evolved over millennia plays itself once more in a permanent transience, entirely faithful to the laws of physics and attraction. The world of the internet allows for a much more gravity-defying identity, where the internet "geek" enjoys the power and confidence that eludes him in the tangible limitations of physical reality.
