November 1, 1999

Would you like some cheesecake? Who wouldn't, after all? Read on and savor.

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Cheesecake Encounters

We all know how terribly convenient the net is, but certainly the things that are most convenient of all are the things we never meant to do in the first place. Let's suppose you were, as I was recently, trying to find someone named Gleason in Lexington, Massachusetts. Suppose further that an Infospace search doesn't turn up the person you were looking for, but gives you a list of other people named Gleason along with some suggestions for nice things you could do for them.

You could send them cards.

You could send them flowers.

You could add them to your Infospace address book.

It's all so achingly easy, it feels almost as if everyone in the world is your friend. Worse than that: it feels as if everyone is a friend whose face is just beyond immediate recollection, someone who, because of some lapse on your part, has drifted away. This probably has to do with the fact that the names are served up in cozy groups of three or four. I started to wonder about Elaine Gleason, who came out at the top of my little list. What is her world like? When was the last time someone mailed her high-quality merchandise that tastefully yet thoughtfully declared I love you? When was the last time someone sent her flowers? As I clicked onward, I pictured her as an elderly aunt, rocking back and forth on her screened-in porch and wondering what on earth had become of me.

These images rolled vaguely around in my head. All I know is that last week I came extremely close to buying Elaine Gleason of Lexington, Massachusetts a cheesecake sampler. Poor sweet thing. She deserves better than the likes of me.

I know the invisible hand that moves me moves dozens like me. Had I sent Elaine that cheesecake you can bet that at more or less the same moment, some lonely net hound in Saskatchewan would have been sending a lovely autumn floral bouquet to a random Infospace search result living in Frederick, Maryland. It's so easy, it just begs to happen.

Does that leave us any closer to the heart of the big question? The big question, of course, is does the net bring us closer together or send us farther apart? Damn if it isn't hard to tell. The faces that emerge endlessly like bubbles in boiling water from net searches, IRC chats, random web site surfing, CU-SeeMe video streaming, how often do they constitute a genuine connection? Is a world where you never suffer the inconvenience of waiting in line a lonelier place?

I have often enough stumbled onto someone's strange or trite or sincere or compelling personal web page and asked myself how it happened that I learned so much about someone I would never otherwise meet. Why do I care to read it? But I do read it, if only to see what another person's world is like. And the same urge that nearly had me sending Elaine Gleason a cheesecake makes me want to talk to them in person and say, I read your story. It seems like a worthwhile chip-chip-chipping away at the ever-present loneliness of the net.

It will be a long time before that vote is in regarding the ultimate uniting or dissociative effects of the wired world. In the meantime, if you are within the sound of my voice, then read my words and realize that this is my story. If you can be bothered to take the time to send an email, please do. And to the first person who sends a genuine U.S. Postal Service postcard to me (Paracelsus, 11 Belknap Terrace, Watertown, Massachusetts), I will send a complimentary cheesecake.

No purchase necessary. Star Chamber employees and family excluded from offer. Cheesecake may not reduce feelings of loneliness. Void where prohibited by law.

Ned (Paracelsus)

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