There is no escaping the internet - at work and certainly in the realm of social networking. The uptake of Facebook and Twitter, amongst others, to "keep in touch" has been phenomenal, especially amongst young people.
But what is all of this doing to what might be described to true social discourse and interaction? It's a subject taken by Melinda Blau in a piece in Psychotherapy Networker [reproduced on AlterNet]:
"In 2000, a mere 46 percent of Americans were online (mostly by dial-up), compared with 80 percent today (mostly by broadband). No one connected wirelessly back then. Today 6 in 10 of us do, a 55 percent increase since 2009. Back then, only half of us had mobile phones; now 85 percent do. Social media sites, such as MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn, didn't exist a decade ago. No one walked around with netbooks, Kindles, Blackberrys, or iPhones; no one Skyped or Tweeted or used Foursquare to let their networks know where they were. Indeed, the convergence of social software, high-speed broadband, and science-fictionesque mobile devices has been accelerating change at such a dizzying pace that researchers already see a generation gap between kids born in the 1980s and those born 10 years later."
And:
"The Internet has become the world's largest, and arguably most important, social thoroughfare. It intersects with millions—no, billions—of streets, alleyways, and self-contained villages where you can find, meet, and work with just about anyone on the planet. It's a marketplace for exchange—of things, of services, of thoughts—a place where you can mobilize "smart mobs" or plan "meetups," where you can "crowd source" ideas or join others on the "creative commons." Every day we have tens, if not hundreds, of brief interchanges—by e-mail or Skype, by instant messages and posts. We poke and we lurk; we bear witness to many lives and mourn deaths together. In short, we're always "talking" to someone and can now recruit more people into our lives than ever before in history."
But what is all of this doing to what might be described to true social discourse and interaction? It's a subject taken by Melinda Blau in a piece in Psychotherapy Networker [reproduced on AlterNet]:
"In 2000, a mere 46 percent of Americans were online (mostly by dial-up), compared with 80 percent today (mostly by broadband). No one connected wirelessly back then. Today 6 in 10 of us do, a 55 percent increase since 2009. Back then, only half of us had mobile phones; now 85 percent do. Social media sites, such as MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn, didn't exist a decade ago. No one walked around with netbooks, Kindles, Blackberrys, or iPhones; no one Skyped or Tweeted or used Foursquare to let their networks know where they were. Indeed, the convergence of social software, high-speed broadband, and science-fictionesque mobile devices has been accelerating change at such a dizzying pace that researchers already see a generation gap between kids born in the 1980s and those born 10 years later."
And:
"The Internet has become the world's largest, and arguably most important, social thoroughfare. It intersects with millions—no, billions—of streets, alleyways, and self-contained villages where you can find, meet, and work with just about anyone on the planet. It's a marketplace for exchange—of things, of services, of thoughts—a place where you can mobilize "smart mobs" or plan "meetups," where you can "crowd source" ideas or join others on the "creative commons." Every day we have tens, if not hundreds, of brief interchanges—by e-mail or Skype, by instant messages and posts. We poke and we lurk; we bear witness to many lives and mourn deaths together. In short, we're always "talking" to someone and can now recruit more people into our lives than ever before in history."
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