Post by wrightwilliams on Aug 9, 2011 15:14:30 GMT -5
With the advent of new technologies people are beginning to communicate in a different way. "The End of Solitude" highlights many technological advances that have seemingly destroyed solitude. These include texting, facebooking, and twitter. While this multitude of new social media certainly altered the way people communicate with each other, it's important to understand the way people interacted in the past to understand the way we interact now.
People have always been very social ever since we've appeared on the Earth in our current form. However, in the past phones remained in one area of the house and weren't capable of being taken on the go. Talking on the phone was an obvious interruption of the day, and therefore undertaken less than frequently. Compare this with the primary form of communication today and there lies the big difference. Texting. Texting is much less intrusive than a phone call and allows people to go about doing other things while they text. This often leads to people feeling that it's necessary to text all day. With a phone call people understood that it would only be for a small section of the day. Because texting is so easy people end up doing it all day, and are therefore never truly alone, as the article says.
One major purpose of Facebook and Twitter is to broadcast your own information to those around you, no matter how trivial the information might be. The need to be approved leads to many people checking facebook all day, and making sure they're not missing 10 seconds of social interaction online. The internet as a whole has opened up the world to constant communication, and people who aren't immediately available via a social network are considered out of touch.
However, examining social media as the culmination of all evil would be unfair. The same constant communication that leads to a loss of solitude on one end of the spectrum, has benefits at the other end. In the past the end of High School would often mean the end of friendships and losing touch with people you'd like to check in on every now and then. Facebook allows you to keep in touch with people that you want to no matter where you are in the country. While criticizing something we would never actually give up gets us nowhere, it's better to first admit that something can be both useful and an obstacle at times. From there we can use it effectively, without destroying our solitude.
People have always been very social ever since we've appeared on the Earth in our current form. However, in the past phones remained in one area of the house and weren't capable of being taken on the go. Talking on the phone was an obvious interruption of the day, and therefore undertaken less than frequently. Compare this with the primary form of communication today and there lies the big difference. Texting. Texting is much less intrusive than a phone call and allows people to go about doing other things while they text. This often leads to people feeling that it's necessary to text all day. With a phone call people understood that it would only be for a small section of the day. Because texting is so easy people end up doing it all day, and are therefore never truly alone, as the article says.
One major purpose of Facebook and Twitter is to broadcast your own information to those around you, no matter how trivial the information might be. The need to be approved leads to many people checking facebook all day, and making sure they're not missing 10 seconds of social interaction online. The internet as a whole has opened up the world to constant communication, and people who aren't immediately available via a social network are considered out of touch.
However, examining social media as the culmination of all evil would be unfair. The same constant communication that leads to a loss of solitude on one end of the spectrum, has benefits at the other end. In the past the end of High School would often mean the end of friendships and losing touch with people you'd like to check in on every now and then. Facebook allows you to keep in touch with people that you want to no matter where you are in the country. While criticizing something we would never actually give up gets us nowhere, it's better to first admit that something can be both useful and an obstacle at times. From there we can use it effectively, without destroying our solitude.