In the last 10 years the ways that we connect with people has changed drastically. Technology has forced us in to pseudo relationships that give us the semblance of deepness (or maybe they are deep and my cynical mind thinks that their not) and communication that is fraught with the potential for miscommunication. I belong to a bunch of list serves and I talk to people on there more frequently than I do with people who I consider to be real life friends. On a few of them, efforts have been made to connect outside of the cyber world and, although I haven't been able to make any of the events, I can imagine how weird it must be to finally MEET someone whom you have soooo much information about and have had such rich discussions, for the first time. It has to be weird no matter how you set the meetings up.
The wife and I went to see "The Social Network" last night (great movie, by the way) and it was interesting to see our lives BF, Before Facebook. Mark Zuckerburg's goal was to give people a way to connect easier. Mission accomplished. 500 million people on the same system without the constraints of school affiliations could very easily be viewed as the largest connected group of people any where. But are we really connected. Even the people who you are directly connected (the people on your friends list) are often just Facebook friends! I once had one of my wife's friends nearly come up to me in Target because she recognized me from Facebook posts, only to stop herself when she remembered that she didn't actually KNOW me.
Have we been lured into a false sense of connectivity but all of these connectivity tools? I recently realized that I am not as much a part of a friend's life as I had thought. We speak every single day but was not included in their real life event. It made me feel bad until I realized that when I plan real events myself, I don't think to include people who I have a cyber relationship with. I call up people who I haven't spoken to in weeks to share THOSE events. So am I really connected? It feels like I am: I'm on seven list serves, I have over 3000 friends on Facebook, I have a Twitter account, a blog that gets hits from China, and a website. But is that all smoke and mirrors? In the end, are we just connected to the people that we see or has definition of connected changed forever? These are my thoughts....what are yours?
1 comment:
I just did a workshop with the senior and freshman class at school to discuss FB (and cyberbullying/privacy disclosure) and how FB is a blessing and a curse. The question that seemed surprising to most was:
"When was the last time you had a real conversation with someone either in person or on the telephone?"
I was met with "what for I speak my friends at least 10-20x a day on FB posts".
I think it is a definite false sense of reality. My "real" friends as you explained are the ones that I consistently in my REAL life.
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