Occasional Observation #13

It seems fitting that 2020 ended with my using a technology I hadn’t used before–video chat via Facebook. For years, the Facebook chat process had seemed totally mysterious to me, but when I finally attempted it last night to talk to a friend, it was almost like the discovery, by Moliere’s “bourgeois gentilhomme,” that he’d been speaking prose all his life. The differences between Facebook video chat and Zoom seem minimal, except that the former does not require the setting up of a special account. Interestingly enough, although (like most people) I spent far more time than usual online during 2020, my Facebook time diminished sharply following my late-August move to West Quebec. I suspect that this was because after the move, I was spending far more time than I had in Nova Scotia talking to people in the flesh. . .