I want to respond to this in more depth if I get the chance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolRaven
Were you living there during the August 2003 blackout? It was amazing how much community there was in a city of that size.
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I've often talked about that same sense of community in the summer of 2003. The absence of an immediate community is perilous for the individual, and 2003 made some of us remember what having a community feels like.
Portable electronics are great in certain ways, but in others, they can lead to social isolation. We're all walled off in private pleasure rooms with our iPads, smartphones, PMPs, game consoles and, yes, even eReaders. It isn't that the devices are evil, but that we use them too much, esp. as a substitute for human interaction.
The blackout forced people to talk to one another directly. Power lines were out, computers were unusable, devices couldn't be charged, TVs were off and so were most phones. You could feel the energy of people interacting in the street as they became a kind of collective sentient organism.
Yes, certain merchants and scavengers took advantage of the situation, but there was also a lot of spontaneous good will. A friend said that being there was like starring in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing: Everyone was out on their neighborhood stoop exchanging news and talking about the end of life as we know it.
Toward the end of the blackout, I could feel the beginnings of real social activism. It was an inspiring feeling until the lights came back on, batteries were charged and people returned to their artificial paradise.