Perhaps this revealed my 'true nature', but it certainly did not reveal an ethical good. Nor are we capable of raw experience. Our perceptions are framed in memories and expectations, both themselves constructed in the horizon not only of our own biographies but of those that have been communicated to us, in fiction as well as fact. I did not expect to pull myself out of the river by my own hair like Baron Munchausen, but I had heard enough about bears both locally and in documentaries and fictions to know that they smell blood from far enough away to make me anxious, and to imagine both my future in ursine intestines, and to plan flight and defence. In short, there is no moment, no perfect Augenblick.
Perception takes time.
The electronic meeting does indeed take place, and indeed takes time. Though its time may be condensed or telescoped in compression algorithms, it is always unfolded again in its decoding. In fact, those translational processes are necessitated by all communication because all communication is mediated. Perception is already an act of communication, despite the individualist credos of cognitive science. Moreover, perception takes time because it is always already mediated in consciousness which in turn is always already social and therefore by definition a product not of perception but of communication.