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If it wasn’t for Facebook, MySpace (zip it, Matt), Twitter & texting, I am not sure how I would keep up with everyone. Used to be things like email & instant message were enough. Now, I check my Yahoo email, Facebook, & Twitter accounts daily, use Yahoo IM for work, AIM for friends, & will occasionally update one or more of them from my Treo. Once in a while I check my site’s email & MySpace account. Add on to that all of my work emails & phone calls &, for some, you’ve got communications overload. However, I sometimes feel like it’s not enough.
How connected should you be? The quick & easy response is that there is no one, right answer. It depends on your wants & needs. But these change over time, thus affecting our habits. Both our professional & personal lives play important roles in this as well.
While connecting people quickly & in ever-increasing ways, is technology really pushing us apart?
As we become increasingly mobile, will our ways become inherently nomadic?
Normally, I’d banter on about this, but I want your opinion.
“Is technology really pushing us apart?” Depends on how you look at it. Technical connectivity can knock down the insular walls we’d routinely face in the past when trying to build a relationship with some people, such as journalists or higher ups in the business world. It can also prevent interaction, like when I text my teenage son instead of calling him (completely intentional). So I guess it does what you allow it to do - positive, negative or otherwise.
I think technology can push people apart if someone allows their technology usage to isolate them socially. If they completely lose all “personal” intimate one on one interaction with others, then yes. But, I have a number of friends in other states across the country that I’ve grown closer to because of my access to technology and when I do get the chance to see them in person, it’s like they were never gone.
It depends on how you use it I guess. You can use it to connect to others, or you can use it to disconnect. Work from home online, order everything online and never leave your house thereby limiting your chances of ever bumping into another human…
Reminds me of that movie, Demolition Man, where Stallone and Sandra Bullock wear helmets that simulate the feeling of sex, because it’s too dangerous to touch each other anymore. I think you could debate this topic from one extreme to the other and there are pros and cons to both.
Even with music. Put 10 people on the beach that each has their own ipod. Everyone grooves to their own thing. Now take the ipods away, and have one loud stereo, and everyone jams together. But with the ipod, we get to pick our own sound. With the stereo we get to make fun of each others dance moves. Depends on which one you want more I guess.
=)