1. About "webworm": (a little history and biology)
The “webworm” actually is originally an insect living common along Gulf Coast and southern Atlantic Coast states. Those pests attack cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower and other crucifers, in addition to woods and trees. Now people use "webworm" for webworm virus and person being in love with Internet. [em01]
2. About the strangers
The fact the matter is I don’t think we are totally strangers. Of course, you, as well as everyone here, are totally an unknown person and this forum is fairly a new place to me. However, we almost see each other everyday or at least every other day. This makes us “familiar strangers”.
As humans we live and interact across a wildly diverse set of physical spaces. We each formulate our own personal meaning of place using a myriad of observable cues such as public-private, large-small, daytime-nighttime, loud quiet, and crowded-empty. Unsurprisingly, it is the people with which we share such spaces that dominate our perception of place. Sometimes these people are friends, family and colleagues. Like Intel research indicated, more often, and particularly in public urban spaces we inhabit, the individuals who affect us are ones that we repeatedly observe and yet do not directly interact with – our Familiar Strangers. This research project explores our often-ignored yet real relationships with Familiar Strangers. They describe several experiments and studies that lead to a design for a personal, body-worn, wireless device that extends the Familiar Stranger relationship while respecting the delicate, yet important, constraints of our feelings and relationships with strangers in public places.
The Familiar Stranger is a social phenomenon first addressed by the psychologist Stanley Milgram in his 1972 essay on the subject. Familiar Strangers are individuals that we regularly observe but do not interact with. By definition a Familiar Stranger (1) must be observed, (2) repeatedly, and (3) without any interaction. The claim is that the relationship we have with these Familiar Strangers is indeed a real relationship in which both parties agree to mutually ignore each other, without any implications of hostility. A good example is a person that one sees on the subway every morning. If that person fails to appear, we notice.
Familiar Strangers form a border zone between people we know and the completely unknown strangers we encounter once and never see again. While we are bound to the people we know by a circle of social reciprocity, no such bond exists between complete strangers and us. Familiar Strangers buffer the middle ground between these two relationships. Because we encounter them regularly in familiar settings, they establish our connection to individual places.
See, we are not true strangers. [em02]
3. About happiness
I am irrigating happily in the English forum (but probably elsewhere). Hum…I guess I need to express my wretched side some time. One day if I become very ugly toward people, I need your forgiveness. [em03]
[此贴子已经被作者于2005-8-1 10:55:13编辑过] | 
楼主: 彩虹玫瑰
发表于 2005-8-1 22:32
