Technology advances continue to change our social lives

Previoiusly published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 5/9/10

Last week I noticed each of my colleagues staring into their computer screens. It struck me how much time we spend doing that. Not everyone is doing the same thing, some are answering e-mails (20 years ago it might be answering telephone messages), some are reading (used to be print journals, books, and newspapers), and some are grading (that too used to be on paper).

Four years ago my university supplied me with a laptop computer. It took me nearly three years to begin using it like one. Now, instead of a briefcase stuffed with books and papers, I carry my laptop home every night. Not only is the laptop changing what is in my briefcase, it is also changing our social life. What follows is not a curmudgeonly rant against change. Change is rarely all good or all bad.

Just as television moved Americans out of dining rooms to the “TV room,” computers, too, are changing social life. In just the last few months, I notice that at my home, with three laptop computers, we three typically sit together in the family room with laptops open tapping out a clickity-clack rhythm on the keyboard as we work away the evening. While the three of us share space, we are not really “together” as each of us is engaged in different worlds. With my laptop, my work day now commonly extends until bedtime. Before the laptop, I would descend to the basement, grade papers, and then rejoin the family upstairs. Now I finish the grading and go on to something else. In many ways, I might as well still be in the basement.

There are Internet sites set up for online marriages (I think legally they are called proxy marriages). I’m sure there are circumstances where the bride and groom cannot be physically in the same place and the capability to do this is a godsend. Weddings are being set up with live video streams for those unable to attend. I imagine a receiving line for those physically there and a digital one for those who are not.

I imagine kitschy animated hugs and handshakes, even a virtual dance with the “avatar” bride at the reception.

Facebook already has an “app” where people host a virtual Thanksgiving feast as a fundraiser. We have the capability to join far-flung families to the same digital table with a laptop and Skype connection. I imagine a soldier joining her family for Thanksgiving; mom’s video image at her seat at the table. She could digitally participate in the family’s traditional cranberry juice toast.

Virtual participation in Fourth of July celebrations would be fun. As many families put on their own fireworks shows, family members joining digitally could activate fireworks remotely. With “air cards” laptops could even be taken on boats, and Grandma, who is otherwise confined to a wheelchair, could even experience the point of view of waterskiing again.

We’ve had audio transmitting capability for a long time. It is the computer’s visual capabilities that make it so appealing. We are visual animals. It is why we like to look at pictures of birthday parties and vacations instead of just hearing about them (“a picture is worth a thousand words”).

Social life is founded upon more than two-dimensional visual and auditory interaction however, which is what computer mediated communication is. As we computer-mediate more and more social interaction, we do lose things. Twenty-five years after getting married I still recall the smell of my wife’s perfume (or maybe it was a dryer sheet). Catholic and Episcopal weddings include mass. The incense is part of the experience.

So is touch. A video congratulation is nice, but it is only filler compared to a hearty handshake or a hug. A kiss is not a visual experience. Yet, camera phones have reduced teenage flirting to “sexting.” Reducing desire or a tease to a two-dimensional digital image is a long way from a perfumed note or a cheek caressed.

Interaction is a sensory experience. The basis of social life is interaction among people even when interaction is highly ritualized, like at weddings and holidays. As the two-dimensional, mostly visual, computer-mediated interactions come to underlie more and more of our interaction, it will change the experience of the interaction and thus change our social lives. What would a digital caress feel like?

Just as industrialization changed the taste and nutritional value of fruit and vegetables, information technology is altering the quality of our social lives.

Do social networks actually curb individualism?

previously published in the Terre Haute Tribune Star, 7/20/08

Is a new generation gap opening? While the term “generation gap” is often used to describe the different tastes, fashions and generational experiences of children and their parents and grandparents, the term originally arose in the 1960s referring to the differences in the Baby Boom generation and their parents and grandparents. The best explanation for it, other than the incredible size of the Baby Boomers, is that the Boomers were the first generation to be raised on television, that the gap was a case of the influence of television.

Have advances in computer technology and the growing presence and importance of the Internet created a similar gap with today’s youth and its Baby Boomer parents and grandparents?

I admit sometimes to being baffled and amazed (amaffled?) at how high schoolers and college students utilize the “social networking” sites. If I already sound like I am sprinkling in a foreign language, then that is more evidence for the presence of a gap. Social networking Web sites are just Web-based software where communities of people can share information through a variety of means: e-mail, text postings, pictures, videos, chatting, file-sharing. At this point, I will not be surprised at the first pregnancy conceived entirely through some kind of file-sharing breakthrough.

In my early 20s, I began using the computer to communicate through e-mail and an early form of “instant messaging.” Both were crude compared to today’s remarkable technologies. And while I am not on the cutting edge of these technologies, I do utilize them both professionally and personally. Things, however, are changing.

Ten years ago many of my college students were computer illiterate and I spent time introducing them to the use of e-mail and simple file-sharing. I don’t have to do that anymore. Just a few short years ago, I could contact any student, quickly, with e-mail. But today, students don’t check their e-mail as much as they used to, because of the use of the social networking sites and text messaging on their cell phones.

The social networking sites are everywhere on the Web. A quick Google search shows hundreds and hundreds of social networking sites with MySpace and Facebook among the most popular. Given less press, however, is AdultFriendFinder, which has over 20 million registered users, where adults seek adults for pleasure.

Most of the press coverage of the networking sites are about the perils of such sites for their mostly young users: stalking by online predators; vicious gossip; faux sites that caricature authorities; and harassment. Recently, the fundraising prowess of Sen. Obama and the use of social networking sites in political campaigning received more positive press coverage.

I also see something of a “borg”-like quality for those who use these sites as a central means of communication. The “borg” were an alien menace species from the Star Trek television series which was technologically connected to each other to create a single shared consciousness. All borg heard the thoughts of all other borg. No individuality, which is what the scary part of them was.

I am not a practicing member of a social networking site and do not maintain a Facebook or MySpace page (I do maintain a blog, however). Observing my high school-age daughter and her college-age sister integrate these networking sites into their lives is a sharp contrast to my own experiences. Information flows heavy and fast through these sites. It is borg-like.

For instance, when my older daughter came home for the summer and appeared to have snagged a job, she immediately posted something to her social networking site, saying something like “I am now selling X.” It seemed almost instantaneous that her network of friends identified the company, had experience with it, and warned her off working for them. I don’t need convincing of the power of social networks, but the integration of the network into what seemed almost like real-time decision-making is incredible to me.

Indeed, the daily (hourly?) updating of personal information on these sites, about oneself and others in one’s community, and the volume of text messaging, creates a crude form of shared consciousness. The collective impulse of today’s high schoolers and college students is showing up in many ways, from the party bus for proms (instead of the limousine) to a redefinition of romance. The collective is in, and individualism (not necessarily individuality) seems out.

When will we have implantable transceivers in our heads so we can hear each other’s thoughts?