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Do you buy the report that technology is not leading to social isolation?
It's almost a mantra in some corners of society, "kids don't know how to socialize, all they do is stare at the computer screen". This Pew study says that's not so. Are you buying it?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33621196/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33621196/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/
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November 05, 2009 05:55 AM
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First, yes I accept the conclusion as it is reported. The Pew Foundation has a solid record of well run, statistically sound studies. Second, and more to the point, it is a good idea to realize that every significant technological development in western history has been met by a social push-back--surprisingly almost always from intellectuals. Aristotle claimed that writing would be the ruination of scholarship and erudition, because it would erode the 5th canon--Memory. When the printing press made the Christian Bible readily available to masses of people in languages they could actually read, the Catholic Church declared that unfiltered personal interpretations of the scriptures was sinful. When William Tyndale published a non-Latin version he was hunted through Europe and killed. In the 9th century, illustrations ruined text, then photographs ruined illustrations. And on and on and on.
The reason for this is that as soon as a new technology emerges, a critical class comes up with a set of criteria for judging its value and in so doing makes itself more "necessary" as the arbiter of taste. The digital world is no different. Computers aren't making people less social. Computers are making people social in different ways. We "meet" people from all over the world, learn to discriminate between genuine identities and frauds (which is significantly safer at a distance), and as the Pew Report confirms, we write more not less and share what we write on a more global scale. So relax, login and interact.
The reason for this is that as soon as a new technology emerges, a critical class comes up with a set of criteria for judging its value and in so doing makes itself more "necessary" as the arbiter of taste. The digital world is no different. Computers aren't making people less social. Computers are making people social in different ways. We "meet" people from all over the world, learn to discriminate between genuine identities and frauds (which is significantly safer at a distance), and as the Pew Report confirms, we write more not less and share what we write on a more global scale. So relax, login and interact.
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November 05, 2009 01:31 AM
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Well, there's a plus and a minus, and it's a bit ironic, but...
According to the middle and high school teachers I've talked to, the kids are as sociable as ever, but their manners are going down the tubes... and not just in terms of them having bad manners, but in terms of them not having any clue at all as to what manners are about.
It has to do with how if someone is annoying them online, they just block the person, with no concern over consequences or retribution.
Also, if they are the one who is *being* annoying, others will block them, but so what... they just go find another forum or another group on the net and plug in with that new group, whereas if it was real life, if they were being deliberate pests, they might have to worry about getting punched, or about getting excluded from a finite social group, like their school mates, where there weren't others to go seek the company of if they were to be excluded.
So, in that respect, one would say that their social skills are suffering for what would be required by the real world.
But there's something else that might no be so bad...
The other thing that the teachers are telling me is that their students are starting to develop an attitude that an adopted personality is just as valid as what their real character might be like. In other words, if today they say they are an alien from another planet, they they *are* an alien from another planet, so take it that way, and not as just an act or a performance.
In other-words, their ability to create virtual personae online through avatars is starting to affect what they consider to be that which constitutes a person's personality and character, namely, whatever they *present* you with *is* the real character.
As so many humans have learned the long and hard way through history, sometimes people make mistakes when they are younger, but even when they reform and they've changed, a history can follow them. What they wish is that society would just take them as what is being presented.
Well.. online kids and their avatars are starting to do that. Whatever persona you present in a real-life situation *is* what they take you to be, without the same concerns about what or who the "real" you is or was... and that's something that many people going back as long as we've been recording history who made mistakes but were able to learn from and reform themselves, wish that their societies would do, and that is forget about that, and just take them now as they are.
So... the juries still out, but so far, according the teachers I know, it's six of one and half-dozen of the other.
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According to the middle and high school teachers I've talked to, the kids are as sociable as ever, but their manners are going down the tubes... and not just in terms of them having bad manners, but in terms of them not having any clue at all as to what manners are about.
It has to do with how if someone is annoying them online, they just block the person, with no concern over consequences or retribution.
Also, if they are the one who is *being* annoying, others will block them, but so what... they just go find another forum or another group on the net and plug in with that new group, whereas if it was real life, if they were being deliberate pests, they might have to worry about getting punched, or about getting excluded from a finite social group, like their school mates, where there weren't others to go seek the company of if they were to be excluded.
So, in that respect, one would say that their social skills are suffering for what would be required by the real world.
But there's something else that might no be so bad...
The other thing that the teachers are telling me is that their students are starting to develop an attitude that an adopted personality is just as valid as what their real character might be like. In other words, if today they say they are an alien from another planet, they they *are* an alien from another planet, so take it that way, and not as just an act or a performance.
In other-words, their ability to create virtual personae online through avatars is starting to affect what they consider to be that which constitutes a person's personality and character, namely, whatever they *present* you with *is* the real character.
As so many humans have learned the long and hard way through history, sometimes people make mistakes when they are younger, but even when they reform and they've changed, a history can follow them. What they wish is that society would just take them as what is being presented.
Well.. online kids and their avatars are starting to do that. Whatever persona you present in a real-life situation *is* what they take you to be, without the same concerns about what or who the "real" you is or was... and that's something that many people going back as long as we've been recording history who made mistakes but were able to learn from and reform themselves, wish that their societies would do, and that is forget about that, and just take them now as they are.
So... the juries still out, but so far, according the teachers I know, it's six of one and half-dozen of the other.
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