I've been an Internet convert almost since I first heard about it -- call it the knee-jerk reaction of a kid raised on Trek -- but I have to say that the case for human contact's been pretty strong over the last three days.
I was deathly afraid of the phone as a kid. Used to cry when my parents made me call someone, hated getting calls even from friends, that kind of thing; I think I felt that I was bad enough at reading people when they were right in front of me, and having only a voice to go by could only lead to bad things.
There's also another small issue too: I think I sound like a chain-smoking Honger with an unfortunate case of bronchitis, but that's more of a sidebar.
The key thing is that I've managed to wire an enormous sum of money, book plane tickets, get early housing arrangements and set up some complicated term deposit thingy for American funds that I don't really understand all by talking to real people. Nary a Google or FAQ needed, only 3 cents for long distance and an adequately pleasant manner (which proved to be easier to pull off than I thought).
Maybe I'm turning into a people-person! Or, perhaps just a people-presence-person. Who knows, these humans keep surprising me.
I was deathly afraid of the phone as a kid. Used to cry when my parents made me call someone, hated getting calls even from friends, that kind of thing; I think I felt that I was bad enough at reading people when they were right in front of me, and having only a voice to go by could only lead to bad things.
There's also another small issue too: I think I sound like a chain-smoking Honger with an unfortunate case of bronchitis, but that's more of a sidebar.
The key thing is that I've managed to wire an enormous sum of money, book plane tickets, get early housing arrangements and set up some complicated term deposit thingy for American funds that I don't really understand all by talking to real people. Nary a Google or FAQ needed, only 3 cents for long distance and an adequately pleasant manner (which proved to be easier to pull off than I thought).
Maybe I'm turning into a people-person! Or, perhaps just a people-presence-person. Who knows, these humans keep surprising me.
