It's morning in the teetering camp of Deadwood, where we find four upstanding chaps exiting the temporary Mayor's busy hotel after breakfast to take some air...
Merrick: Conditions in that dining room have grown increasingly oppressive.
Star: It's crowded for a fact.
Bullock: Price of camp success.
Utter: That fellow was being smart with you, Merrick. Your ass was nowhere near his shoulder.
Merrick: Well, whatever my proximity it was certainly unintentional.
Utter: Well, believe me, I had the aim.
Star: We were just remarking how tight it's all gettin' in there.
Merrick: Ahh, yet how many memories have their fond recollection in that tight little dining room?
Utter: Yeah, well it's fucked now.
Bullock: Anyways, we gotta open soon.
Merrick: Who would argue that the venue was the cause of these happy memories? Nor the bill of fair? The bitter coffee, the rancid bacon, those stale biscuits that were tomb and grave to so many insects. No, gentlemen. It was the meandering conversation, the lingering with men of character, some of whom are walking with me now. It was such pleasure to experience, and such a joy now to recall.
Star: Good of you to say, Mr. Merrick.
Utter: Back at ya, as far as that goes.
Bullock: Yeah.
Merrick: Gentlemen, what's to prevent us from freeing our friendship from dependence on that little dining room? Relying not on happenstance and appetite to further commerce between us, but on our own conscious choice?
Utter: Meanin' what?
Merrick: Meaning, Mr. Utter, the most informal and disorganized of clubs.
Bullock: We gotta open, Sol.
Utter: Yeah, I don't join clubs.
Merrick: No, no.. It's sole purpose could be just walking together, as we are now.
Star: Why don't we just walk together when we happen to be out?
Merrick: We could, we could. Or, we could dedicate ourselves to the principal of walking together. Maybe all we need is a name?
Bullock: Sol? We gotta open.
Utter: Yeah, I got freight comin' in.
Star: This was good. I enjoyed this.
Utter: Yeah, we'll do it again.
Bullock: Mornin, Mr. Merrick.
Merrick: Morning, Mr. Bullock, and thank you for the letter to the editor.
The others leave.
Merrick: The Ambulators...
Given my half-baked arts degree attempted some time in the late 70s, I have just enough memory and more than enough gusto to wax lyrical about Internet and Society. The thing is, the internet just helps what we've always done. Jostle, commune, regard, observe, and eventually, we find some order in the chaos.
Love that.
The passage above resonated particularly with me with regards to Flickr. No longer is Flickr a little cosy dining room where it's easy to find a seat. Its "bitter coffee and rancid bacon" could be our very early, rough-shod designs. Somehow, out of that primordial system, beautiful groups emerged. Now that it's so enormous - millions of photos uploaded EVERY DAY, millions of members - I'm finding myself more curious about what happens when a community bursts its banks. Something fractal, to be sure.
(Hopefully the above trans-snip is fair fuckin' use, cocksucker.)