When I first shared this interesting tweet from online pal Brenda Johima, it was with some reservations. After mulling it over for a few weeks, I want to explain them.
Massive counter-factuals always make me a bit nervous: “if we didn’t have computers…” is the gateway to another universe in which so many things are different from the world we live in that it’s hard to evaluate the hypothetical alternative. “If we didn’t have computers…” we wouldn’t have the same kind of global economy (no complex online trading systems), we wouldn’t have a foreclosure crisis (without computer-modeled derivatives and default swaps the bad loans would never have been made), and your local newspaper would still be beholden to the typesetters’ union. “If we didn’t have computers…” is a world in which the historical path unleashed by the industrial revolution reached a dead end, or branched in some direction that is, from here, unimaginable. Whether that path would have led to a world in which we’re leaning across our picket fences to swap potato salad with the neighbours, or one in which we holed up in our individual compounds and waited for the apocalypse…well, I don’t know if I’m prepared to weigh in on that one.
What we can discuss are the roots of our current crisis is de-socialization….a crisis that has been pretty convincingly attributed not to computers, but to another screen: TV. In Robert Putnam’s research on declining social capital (the community involvement and social ties that hold societies together), TV emerged as the chief culprit. Both Putnam (with a little help from me) and others have investigated whether computers contribute to that decline, or mitigate it. The most compelling evidence I’ve seen suggests that the use of the Internet supplements rather than displaces people’s offline social interactions, and correlated with people participating more actively in offline activities.
Brenda’s tweet reminded me of the disconnect between people’s subjective experience of the Internet, and what research tells us about its social impact. Social media may feel like the answer to the role the Internet plays in accelerating and distracting us from our community lives, but that acceleration and that distraction long predate the advent of the personal computer and the Internet. If anything, social media and online interaction offer the most promising antidote to the social disconnection that has characterized our modern lives.
Alex,
As a child, I have fond memories of my Father and I listening to the “ask your neighbor” show on AM radio on Saturday mornings. For those of you not born yet, “Ask your Neighbor” format: A caller would pose a question over the airwaves, “does anyone know how to fix a leaky faucet”? Followed by the host moderating call in responses from other listeners. Highly effective, multi-directional communications, ensued that were very communal and very local. Most times we even knew the “neighbor” that was calling in.
I was fond of listening to the show because I was with my dad, I knew the people answering the questions, and the storytelling that unfolded was oftentimes better than the question or solutions.
Fast forward, along comes computers, the internet, and blogging. (Means and Methods)
I still enjoy the storytelling that takes place through Twitter, Facebook and blogs. I still marvel at how fast a global story unfolds over the Internet. (Iran Elections, and United You Broke My Guitar to name a few) These global comments and answers can take on a life of their own and become the story!
I appreciate that blogs, Facebook and Twitter conversations aren’t “slotted” in time, and because they’re digital I can find , search and sort them, and refer back time and again. I can even link to others with similar questions and answers to further enrich the original question I posed. So what’s not to like?
I miss sitting with my dad listening to storytelling.
(Try blogging or listening to Twitter chatter with your son or daughter. Its just not the same)
I miss the richness and spontaneity of the human voice that AM radio provided.
(YouTube provides, but again NOT)
And I miss not knowing who these people are that are answering my leaky faucet questions.
(It’s my own fault I have too many friends on Facebook)
Intimacy would be the word I’m searching for. As exciting, dynamic, and global as this new form of socialization is, it lacks intimacy.
Note:
Ironically some of today’s fresh start ups are focused on making “social” unsocial, or private and intimate again.
Unsocial – http://unsoical.mobi
PATH – http://path.com
to name a few.
Alex,
Thanks for providing a source to support your statement that the use of the internet supplements, rather than displaces, offline social interaction. I wish more bloggers took the time to source their statements and opinions. Anyways, I did look at it, and was quite surprised to see it was so old–2001.
This question might be a bit off topic, but is the reason that you have not sourced something more recent indicative of a lack of academic research on the effects of the internet on society?
If so, how can we work together with academic (non-biased, non-commercial) researchers to get them up to speed? Obviously, the advances in online technologies make it hard to keep up, but it appears, in my experience, that many academic institutions are struggling to keep up with the changing landscape. I’m currently studying communications research at SFU and the research policies and practices in that faculty do not seem to reflect or include current online and social media trends. This is very surprising to me, since the heart of communications is media, and as many authors (Tapscott being one) have proven, online media is quickly overtaking traditional media in many populations.
I just wonder what your thoughts are about this.