© Rear Window (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
'And when we fast-forward to today we see an almost cruel irony in that people can and often do develop on-line relationships with folks on the other side of the globe, without leaving their homes. But at the expense of the time that would have otherwise been available for involvement in other activities,which might foster a sense of community in their villages, towns and cities.' Will Baker
Thinking further on the notion of the ‘blogger’ and the way that they are said to be ‘exerting a "disproportionately large influence" on society,’ I can’t help but muse over another of the potential social repercussions of new media.
Sometimes, in an effort to kill some time, procrastinate or nurture my voyeuristic inclinations, I’ll find myself absently scanning the blogs of strangers, people I’ve never met and probably will never meet. I say strangers, although the term seems somewhat counterintuitive – I know their names, where they live, the way they’ve chosen to decorate their houses, what they wore yesterday and, perhaps, what they chose to eat for breakfast.
It seems quite natural to share in their lives despite the lopsidedness of our interactions, you see, they don’t know a thing about me, nor are they aware that I know anything about them.
Despite this fact, I don’t feel all that creepy about peering through the window that is the computer screen and into their daily lives and, in my mind, there is absolutely nothing problematic regarding the nature of social interaction in the blogosphere, or new media in general. It offers so many opportunities to passively experience the way other people live and to find like-minded, interesting individuals all over the world. What does concern me, however, is when I realize that I haven’t spoken to my grandparents for a couple of weeks, but I’m well and truly up to date with the daily happenings of a person I don’t really know.
Despite this fact, I don’t feel all that creepy about peering through the window that is the computer screen and into their daily lives and, in my mind, there is absolutely nothing problematic regarding the nature of social interaction in the blogosphere, or new media in general. It offers so many opportunities to passively experience the way other people live and to find like-minded, interesting individuals all over the world. What does concern me, however, is when I realize that I haven’t spoken to my grandparents for a couple of weeks, but I’m well and truly up to date with the daily happenings of a person I don’t really know.
There seem to be some interesting repercussions for our new, digital way of life; most pointedly in the way we approach our social networks.
An article in the New York Times proposes that ‘time that was previously spent interacting socially has increasingly been displaced by the virtual variety. A recent editorial in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine made the timely point that social networking “encourages us to ignore the social networks that form in our non-virtual communities […] The time we spend socializing electronically separates us from our physical networks".'
This is a point that has been made before but, I suppose, can be forgotten as a result of the hype surrounding digital media, the internet, and how socially inclusive and dynamic the world has become as a result. It is worrying though, that the legitimacy of these new social relationships may not undergo substantial scrutiny, or could be seen as being, at best, unrelated to the prospective increase of alienation in our non-virtual social networks, or, at worst, an antidote to such growing social dislocation.
This is a point that has been made before but, I suppose, can be forgotten as a result of the hype surrounding digital media, the internet, and how socially inclusive and dynamic the world has become as a result. It is worrying though, that the legitimacy of these new social relationships may not undergo substantial scrutiny, or could be seen as being, at best, unrelated to the prospective increase of alienation in our non-virtual social networks, or, at worst, an antidote to such growing social dislocation.
Not only does it seem ridiculous to measure the strength or diversity of our social network by the number of RSS feeds we subscribe to, or Twitter accounts we follow, I worry if there will be a time when we overlook, or fail to recognise, our growing detachment from our real-life social networks because we percieve ourselves as being sufficiently socially involved in other ways. Or, on an even more dramatic scale, could the advent of digital socialisation one day result in a world where:
‘real conversation in real time may eventually give way to these sanitized and easier screen dialogues, in much the same way as killing, skinning and butchering an animal to eat has been replaced by the convenience of packages of meat on the supermarket shelf. Perhaps future generations will recoil with similar horror at the messiness, unpredictability and immediate personal involvement of a three-dimensional, real-time interaction.’
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