Colbert did a segment on how technology is killing our memories because everything can be googled or stored in the cloud. Is there a relationship between increasing reliance on technology and the general lack of interest in being knowledgeable?
It seems at a decent chunk of the US takes pride in ignorance.
Over at Brass Tack Thinking, Amber Naslund took to her blog to stress that virtual relationships are as valuable and meaningful as real world ones.
Human relationships have many facets. When they’re real, they’re not real because of the things we use to cultivate them. They’re real because the human bond is there, the connection that extends beyond the means. No tool, website, or thingamajig can take that away, and none can replace it entirely. When it happens, that bond between people – either personal or professional – is as real and genuine as the individuals themselves.
I’d echo the sentiments.
I’ve lived in a lot of places over the last 15 years, and as I, and my friends, have relocated we’ve taken to the technology of the times to keep our friendships alive. From instant messaging to free weekend minutes to Friendster to LinkedIn to Facebook to Twitter, social technologies have allowed me to stay in touch with people I’ve met in real time and in greater detail than the occasional email would permit.
Had there not been meaningful connections shaped by working, schooling, and playing together, there would be no reason to stay in touch. Genuine interest in the lives and well-being of friends exists whether I live 5 minutes on foot or 5 hours by plane away. I probably interact with more people on a daily basis now than I did just a few years ago because social technology makes it so effortless.
On the flipside, through blogging and twitter, I’ve met a variety of people from around the country and abroad that have enriched my life. Given the scattered geography of my digitally-discovered connections, I likely would never have met them without technology. I know them as well as my real world connections, because of the endless banter that Twitter and Facebook allow. And I’ll never ceased to be amazed when someone approaches me at a networking event to see if I’m THAT Andrea_Zak.
In fact, I’d argue that virtual relationships have made me a better friend in real time. As someone who has always been a bit guarded with new people, technology created a buffer zone that allowed me to get to know amazing folks. Given my online connections tend to operate outside my real world social network, open interactions somehow felt safer — even though I realize the converse is probably true.
That distance allowed me to express myself freely in ways I was, at the time, too insecure to express to live people in my presence. Having that space helped me build up the confidence to hold my values near and dear 24/7, not just when I’m chatting away with a semi-stranger that comments on my blog. Now I’m more likely to make genuine connections with people, because I’m more comfortable sharing of myself and build stronger bonds as a result.
Can the internet be an interminable waste land? You betcha. But it can also be an electronic coffee clutch that keeps you in the know about the people that matter to you.
Social technology: relationship hype or helper?
photo by scion_cho
Over at Beyond the Times, Walter wrote about the inevitable echo chamber effect that would follow the introduction of a news aggregator into Facebook update streams. Given all the “likes” assigned a variety of content on the site, it would be an easy feat to develop an algorithm to direct relevant news that fits an individual user’s world view, eliminating any challenges to that perspective.
It’s not as though such formulas aren’t already pervasive on the intertubes. Netflix regularly recommends a variety of films within subgenres that I frequently view, and Amazon.com is constantly tweaking its suggestions to me based on my purchases, viewing and rating of titles.
Eli Pariser recently discussed the filter bubble phenomena with Lynn Paramore of the Roosevelt Institute:
Since Dec. 4, 2009, Google has been personalized for everyone. So when I had two friends this spring Google “BP,” one of them got a set of links that was about investment opportunities in BP. The other one got information about the oil spill. Presumably that was based on the kinds of searches that they had done in the past. If you have Google doing that, and you have Yahoo doing that, and you have Facebook doing that, and you have all of the top sites on the Web customizing themselves to you, then your information environment starts to look very different from anyone else’s. And that’s what I’m calling the “filter bubble”: that personal ecosystem of information that’s been catered by these algorithms to who they think you are.
This technology-induced bubble is particularly problematic in that it is human nature to accept facts and opinions that align with personal beliefs and disregard information that clashes. A recent Yale Law School study published in the Journal of Risk Research found that regardless of political leanings,
Individuals systematically overestimate the degree of scientific support for positions they are culturally predisposed to accept.
Social technology is making it effortless find and follow preferred sentiment and these sites are increasingly becoming the go-to places for news. Forty-two percent of respondents in a Retrevo Gadgetology study admit to checking and updating their Twitter and Facebook feeds first thing in the morning, with 23 percent of iPhone identifying these feeds as their morning news. In a recent Oxygen Media study, more than one third of women 18-34 years old reported checking Facebook before getting out of bed in the morning.
What happens to society when people can no longer have informed discussions of reality and data because of a refusal to acknowledge the very existence, let alone the validity, of information that conflicts with our own world view? Does it increasingly heighten the notion of an “Other” that could destroy a preferred way of living? Should marginalized religions, races and cultures expect increased persecution for being an outlier of mainstream thought?
And most importantly, how do we find ways to be more receptive to ideas that challenge our own? New solutions to old problems could emerge from the discussion that follows.
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