I can't stop thinking about the Internet even if it is:
SUMMER SOLSTICE/MIDSUMMER today

To say that it rained all morning this morning is a lie. That was
yesterday, the 20th of June, today is the twenty-first, all day long. A
short day too. I am in the computer library. Surrounded by the red
skirts, the red pants, worn here at Dara Academy in Thailand, my eyes
get distracted from the computer screen. Here there is no evidence of
Solstice. This library plays the latest Thai pop CD's or radio stations.
Students come in and out, visit web sites, set up new email accounts, or
chat. I took a quick random survey asking, "What site are you chatting
on?" two girls replied, "ICQ"- like it was a brand name, or logo that I
should have heard of before even asking. They giggled and returned to
their keyboards. One of the students was chatting with someone in
Singapore, they were writing about being vegetarian in English.

In Thailand over the last seven months that I have been living here,
there are many Internet café's popping up like fresh daisies in the
spring. The price to use them has dropped from 60 or 30 baht (40-$1 us
dollar) to 10-15 an hour. It is a social space for kids to hang out and
play games. It could be a space bubbling with interactions, festive
events, beyond shopping and TV. But as I watch the chatters locked into
a rapid-fire conversation with the keyboard and the screen, it is
obviously not such a place. Like a parent or a friend who grabs your arm
to pull you from the street before you cross too quickly, not noticing
the on-coming car, I want moralize the internet with some content.

The fact that these spaces exist make access to computers, ideas,
information (all of the rhetoric of the information age possible.) But
the play, the talking, the sharing in one space to another is missing.

Last year at this time, maybe on this date, I was chatting with people
from four sites in Europe while I was in Ohio, USA. Four small groups,
one in Italy, Germany, France, and well I can't remember where it was,
the camera didn't work half of the time. It was fun. I took screen shots
and made a friend. A good experience. Long live communication across
the lines.

Mary Jo Walters

copyright © the author, 2000