Hi everyone, I'm posting a quick 2nd entry for this week. I was catching up on reading the Economist last night, and ran across this article on e-communication and society. It relates to my discussion earlier, about how people communicate among and between groups, and how this media affects their point of view of the world.
In today's Web 2.0, many hope that social networking will allow for greater communication around the world, and perhaps include communities that were previously overlooked. Yet the author argues that today's social networking simply allows pre-existing groups of people to come together, rather than breaking down any barriers.
He writes:
A generation of digital activists had hoped that the web would connect groups separated in the real world. The internet was supposed to transcend colour, social identity and national borders. But research suggests that the internet is not so radical. People are online what they are offline: divided, and slow to build bridges.
You can read the entire article at http://www.economist.com/node/16943885?story_id=16943885 ... go check it out!
I had a nice long comment here, but then it disappeared due to the wonders of computer technology. Here's a slightly abridged version.
ReplyDeleteI agree with this argument on the whole, and I'd like to address some possible criticism with it. Tools like Chatroulette, it could be argued, produce random associations between people, perhaps facilitating a frank and honest clash (or coming together) of opinions and cultures. However, it could be argued that by using these tools, we are joining a group that expects some sort of cultural confrontation, in effect falling into one of the "pre-existing" social groups that the Economist article discusses. As a note, I don't believe that tools like Chatroulette have been used for much productive work, on the whole. While I'm sure someone out there has had a meaningful exchange through the program, the majority of the interaction as I've heard it reported has been...less so, to be polite.