Heidegrrrrrr.

"Heidegger observed that technology worked to promote a shrinking of the world. While technology enabled a breaching of distance, it also concealed other forms of interaction which take place within the world. Heidegger argued that the essential nature of things lay in their 'nearness.' Nearness involves how things reveal themselves as meaningful within the context of our dealings with them. Instead of bringing things near, the shrinking of distance and time by technological means has caused nearness to withdraw."
*Simon Cooper*

We tend to think of technological artifacts as mere tools that extend one or another of our limbs or senses. A phone just amplifies a voice that's too far away to hear with the naked ear. A pair of glasses make words and faces come into focus when our eyes aren't up to the task. But by bringing the world in--by making it louder and sharper--do we lose touch with the "essential nature" of the things that fill it?

This makes me wonder if people, too, have a "nearness." Maybe they do. Is it possible that a person's nearness can still reveal itself if it's mediated by technology? Or is it inevitably concealed by the medium through which it's transmitted? Hiding under a layer of carcinogenic, electromagnetic waves... I'd like to think that someone could reach through those waves and find another person floating on a raft and sipping a daiquiri on a nearby crest.

(I know I'm completely skewering Cooper--and in the process, Heidegger too--but so be it.)