Wednesday, May 7, 2008
On my soapbox: Virtual Communities
April 19 2008 - the date that Facebook took over the #1 social network position from myspace. (Alexa, 2008). It really makes me wonder what is the good in all this web-based networking - I mean, sure its easy to reach people in one place on a fairly regular basis, and I know catching up on the lives of people from high school or even earlier in my life is much simpler. Sharing media, extending communications and gaining a sense of community are also up there. But really, in comparison to the good ol’ days of sitting around with a cup of coffee and catching up with old mates, the cold feeling of checking your wall on face book just doesn’t come close.
According to Rheingold, virtual communities are “social aggregations that emerge from the net when enough people carry on public discussions long enough with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace” (1994). The phrase ‘with sufficient human feeling’ worries me a little. Certainly, the concept of sending messages to one another, whether it be in the form of a wall entry or a ‘gift’ or a ‘tag’ or god knows what else, can be classified as showing some ‘human feeling’, but it still is not the same as interpersonal, face-to-face sharing of life and experience. Sitting in a dark room on a computer looking at you tube clips and ‘poking’ one another is not a real form of living.
I have a friend that said to me “There are two kinds of people in this world: Those that live, and those that blog.” Okay, so she may have been a little extreme, but it is something that stuck in my mind. I don’t want to turn into a computer zombie. I want to still go out and see live music and drink and party and generally socialise with REAL people. Not those who claim to be my friend because we sat on the bus next to each other once and I will probably never speak to again.
I know that this is extremely closed-minded, but I am scared about the future of society. I worry about the ways in which we are heading in terms of interaction and relationships. The concept of completely virtual relationships where you have never met the person you are conversing in real life - you have never looked them in the face, have never made eye contact with them, have never seen their smile or laugh - it cannot really be healthy.
There are a number of people who tend to agree with me for their own reasons: be it Umair Haque’s view (2008) of face book being evil, or Li and Bernoff’s view (2008) that face book is destroying the consumer as we know it. Facebook, although perhaps modern in terms of technology and virtual communities, is forcing us to go backwards in terms of social interactions - one of the things that define us as humans.
References
Alexa (2008) http://awis.blogspot.com/2008/05/facebook-overtakes-myspace_07.html
Haque, U. (2008) The Facebook Effect http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/haque/2008/05/http20bitscom20080506thestateo.html
Li, C. and Barnoff, J. (2008) Social Networking | Transformation http://www.changeboard.com/hrcircles/blogs/editor/archive/2008/05/07/social-networking-how-it-s-transforming-the-world.aspx
Rheingold (1994) in Bruns, A (2008) KCB201 Lecture Week 6 Online Communities. Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology
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3 comments:
I agree, I think that we are becoming obsessed with our online identities and our real world relationships are suffering. What I find most disturbing is the idea of ‘friendship’ on Facebook. If we can’t sustain a relationship with someone in the real world why do we need to be their virtual friend?
Hodgkinson (2008) discusses the competitiveness we have with one another over how many ‘friends’ we have on online communities. It seems that quality of friendships count for nothing and quantity is everything.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook
This is a clip from an article in the Sydney Morning Herald on March 27, 2008 which you might find interesting, if not slightly disturbing as it demonstrates how Facebook is constructing a warped sense of friendship:
A British judge has made official what many of us have long suspected - that being "Facebook friends" with someone doesn't necessarily make you their friend.
The magistrate was presiding over a harassment case in which a woman accused her former boyfriend of hounding her by sending her a "friend request" on the popular social networking site on January 21.
The ex-boyfriend, was cleared of the charge after the magistrate accepted his argument that the contact was highly innocuous because being "Facebook friends" could not be defined as "friendship in the traditional sense".
http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/facebook-friends-not-real-judge/2008/03/27/1206207279597.htm
Totally agree that it is scary to think of our furture society as one being totally networked, I thought the image of just sitting at a screen poking somone on facebook was especially poignant for me. I also believe that the social web could never hope to surpass actual physical social interaction as some would have you believe.
But at the same time, while it is quite a scary thought I don't believe that is where society is headed. Some people may choose to live their lives like you had depicted, however I believe that most see the social web as a mere extension of our offline lives, certainly not something that will replace it. I think that social networking can provide the oppurtunities to meet people outside the normal networks that you or I partake in in the real world, allowing us to take different ideologies, perspectives and opinions. A little utopian I guess but this is my view of the social web as something truly helpful and democratic.
Kate,
Your blog was very insightful about just how much we rely on these online identities and social networks as part of our daily intakes of life. In fact, you are exactly right about the good old days of having a cup of coffee with old friends. Does this even exist anymore? I know I make a conscious effort to catch up with my close friends face to face regularly, but there are those old friends who I only speak to on Myspace (sorry not a Facebook person unfortunately) and in all honesty, don’t really plan on catching up with them for coffee. The way you have constructed this identity of internet users as those “sitting in a dark room on a computer” is a little bit farfetched, because not all of us are like that. But it really does scare me to think that there ARE people out there that really have no identity besides their online ones.
Your friend said “There are two kinds of people in this world: Those that live, and those that blog.” This quote saying really stuck with me as well, because I’ve never heard it phrased like that before. I agree that life is really about living and going out there and having fun, not sitting at your computer replying to that friend from high school that never really took the time to actually talk to you then. So really what’s the point of these online identities? Do they really benefit us in any way? I must admit though, I do get little thrills out of receiving Myspace comments, but most of the time I prefer face to face interactions. You’ve raised a very good point about the future of society? If people are like this now, what’s to say what they are going to be like in 20 or 30 years? Scary thought Kate.
I really liked the way you structured this blog, and the background research was all relevant to the unit content. Well done and thank you for giving some insight into this strange world.
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