It’s dismissed as coincidence*
That tree? The one that falls in the forest without anybody nearby to hear it? It still makes a sound, as long as the tree has its own Twitter account.
The Internet detects the previously undetectable. It is, among other things, a machine for detecting long-distance coincidences. Three decades ago there would have been little chance for me on one side of the country and David Dobbs on the other to find out that we both own copies of John McPhee’s Coming Into The Country and that our copies are turned to exactly the same page.
But it is not three decades ago. It is now. So yesterday, within about an hour of me posting this snapshot of a passage I’d just read in Coming Into The Country, I got Twitter messages and email from David. Here’s part of one of the tweets: “I JUST LAST NIGHT looked up that passage as an example of a great transition. It’s right on the dresser here next where I just saw your post. This is blowing my mind.”
Me, too.
—————-
* For the edification of anyone who didn’t misspend the 1980s watching “Bewitched” reruns on WGN, “It’s dismissed as coincidence” is a reference to this commercial for “an important new library.”
