Yesterday I wrote a post over at Mashable called Is the Internet Destroying Real World Interactions? In the post I wondered about the impact that technology is taking on our lives and if we weren’t in the end missing out by being more concentrated on technological solutions rather than being able to appreciate the more human interactions. What was interesting was the reaction by way of the comments to the post itself and on FriendFeed.
Much of the reaction on Mashable to the post was for the part in agreement with the sentiment of the post. On FriendFeed however the reaction couldn’t have been more opposite with most people not seeing anything wrong with this increase in digital interaction instead of human interaction. In some ways this really shouldn’t be all that surprising considering the fact that the demographics of the FriendFeed users are probably those that are heavy into technology already. With Mashable this would probably be more of a level ground of different types of readers.
This raises an interesting question though that I have been thinking about since writing that post and following the two different types of comments being made. That being – considering the fact that the extremely large percentage of kids growing up at this point have never known a world without the Internet can they even grasp the importance of the human aspect of communication. When all you have had is text messaging between people standing right next to you instead of looking them in the face and actually speaking more than empty platitudes how can you have an understanding of how important real intimacy of verbal communication is.
In some ways I am almost reaching the point where I feel lucky that I grew up in a time before the Internet. It is like that is giving me an advantage in dealing with the world that I wonder the younger generation will have. As we move to more and more online interaction being accepted as the norm will this younger generation be able to deal with real face to face communications that are a level above just day to day chatter.
Some might say that the benefits of this modern way of communicate far outweigh any loss of real personal interaction but I seriously wonder if any possible benefit is really a trade off worth making.
What do you think?
In the years prior to the whole Web 2.0 and Social Media just about all of the methods of communication had specific protocols that had to be followed regardless of the company or developer wanting to use them. Requests for Comments – otherwise known as RFC’s – mailing lists were the battleground where all the protocols used by Web 1.0 were fought over. In the end though we had a set of standard protocols that have served us well since that time. Sure they are added to or changed as we have moved forward but the point is that these protocols were the common ground that all developers worked with for the benefit of all the users.
It never fails lately that at some point usually intelligent people struggle forward with the inane proposition that the Internet and by proxy the web browser is the new operating system. I’m sorry but this is such a bullshit argument. It really is.
