Last night, rather impulsively, I joined Twitter. In hindsight, it feels like I was drunk when I did it, although I'd considered joining for months.
I've decided, after a good nights sleep, to give it a shot. However, adding it to my list of social websites I'm currently on, has made me think about social networking in the twenty-first century, and whether or not our current methods are an improvement on the ones we used in the past.
Before the internet, social networking meant going to parties and talking to people, glass of wine in hand, exchanging business cards or, in some cases, writing phone numbers on napkins or the back of your hand. This would lead to more meetings, to more conversations, and if you were lucky, the betterment of your career. Now that the internet has latched onto our lives like a giant leech, social networking has mutated. It is still about conversations, but on a far smaller scale through Tweets. Contact information is exchanged, but it's e-mail addresses. Oh, the telephone is still used, but chances are people are texting instead of talking. The personal, human part of social networking seems to have been lost.
With online social networking, it is true that you are able to reach a larger audience, to meet people who you wouldn't otherwise meet if it wasn't for the internet, and make connections with people on the other side of the globe. However, what you can't do through a computer is to observe someone, to look at their body language and their speech patterns, which are key in determining if you think said person is trustworthy. Part and parcel of being on the internet now is placing our trust in people and websites. Our trust that they won't repeat the things we write in our personal blogs, that they won't give out our credit card information, and that what they're offering isn't a scam. But that is difficult to do when all you can rely on are words. Yes, there is Skype, but you aren't having a Skype conversation with the CEO of Amazon. It's an imperfect system.
I've come to the conclusion that we are losing the personalization in our lives. It's become almost too easy to do things from our desk chairs, that I think traditional networking is fading. You can still do it, but the opportunities are fewer than they were before, and if you want to get anywhere--if you want to promote yourself--you have to sign up to Facebook or Twitter or whatever other site in order to do so. Hell, you don't have to leave your chair for anything these days, let alone socializing. You can go to school online, some work online, you can even buy groceries online. It's got to the point where today's human in the first world doesn't have to leave the house in order to live their life.
And isn't that sad?
Last night, after joining the many Tweeters (or would that be Twits?) already online, I could actually feel myself becoming more tethered to my computer. I'm on my computer so much already (more when I'm not at my parents', since I don't own a TV), and I'd just given myself another reason to be in front of its screen. And I didn't like it. I felt like I was trapping myself, like I was pulling away from the external world and into something that was so internally focused as to seem more real than the things around me. It all just felt so...wrong.
I don't think I'm silly for feeling that way, or the only person who does. For all that the internet is fantastic, I think it is being overused, and starting to damage aspects of our lives. When we're walking down the street now, and we see something, our first thought is no longer how wonderful or strange it is, but rather, how we would form what we saw into a Tweet or Facebook status update. We don't stop to smell the roses anymore, we stop to turn on our phones and comment on them. We are a society who lives in the moment, but in a limited moment, in the superficial moment that we can write in under 140 characters and share, and then read and comment on other people's superficial moments. We don't absorb what's seeing and happening to us, at least not the everyday things. But it's the everyday things that make life life, and if we continue walking with our heads buried in our iPhones then I guarentee that we will become a society that has difficulty enjoying--or caring--about life outside our own heads.
I saw a film in October called Summer Wars. In that film, everything from students to banks were connected to one giant network called Oz, and when that network was hacked, the entire world was thrown into chaos. It's a beautiful film, and now one of my favourites.
And I wonder how soon that will be our future.
(Image borrowed from here.)
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