![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hel_anaThe company I worked for, Hotline Communications, laid off all of its staff about a month ago. Unemployment sucks, yes. However, the experience brought home to me once again the basic goodness of people.
Immediately, people, mostly those I knew online, contacted me to offer their support. It was almost overwhelming the amount of love directed my way in the aftermath. It led to the first and only phone conversation with an online friend who was the last person on earth whose voice I ever expected to hear. And people are still there for me, a month later.
I think it's easy to focus on the negatives in the increasingly smaller world created by communication advances. We see so much that's wrong with the world, information our great-grandparents didn't have access to. The net has a host of bogeymen of its own, things like piracy, information theft, "net addiction".
However, the ability to connect with people on the other side of the world brings a great deal that's positive to our lives. I know a woman who's raising a baby kangaroo whose mother was killed by a car. It happened just before the September 11 attacks, and the knowledge of that small scrap of life, fighting for life and being fought for by someone in a selfless act, was a very bright light in the aftermath of the attacks for me. And without the Net, that's not a relationship that I would have had.
The relationships that I've built on the Net, and my ability to reach out and find out about life far away, are something I'm very glad about. As much as the exciting things I got to work on at Hotline, those relationships are one of the most valuable things I'm taking away.
And to everyone who's offered me their support and love in the last month, thank you. I appreciate it every day.
Immediately, people, mostly those I knew online, contacted me to offer their support. It was almost overwhelming the amount of love directed my way in the aftermath. It led to the first and only phone conversation with an online friend who was the last person on earth whose voice I ever expected to hear. And people are still there for me, a month later.
I think it's easy to focus on the negatives in the increasingly smaller world created by communication advances. We see so much that's wrong with the world, information our great-grandparents didn't have access to. The net has a host of bogeymen of its own, things like piracy, information theft, "net addiction".
However, the ability to connect with people on the other side of the world brings a great deal that's positive to our lives. I know a woman who's raising a baby kangaroo whose mother was killed by a car. It happened just before the September 11 attacks, and the knowledge of that small scrap of life, fighting for life and being fought for by someone in a selfless act, was a very bright light in the aftermath of the attacks for me. And without the Net, that's not a relationship that I would have had.
The relationships that I've built on the Net, and my ability to reach out and find out about life far away, are something I'm very glad about. As much as the exciting things I got to work on at Hotline, those relationships are one of the most valuable things I'm taking away.
And to everyone who's offered me their support and love in the last month, thank you. I appreciate it every day.
