OK friends - for my first post - a quote from a new book, one of several recent works I've read in the field of social network theory...in it, the author offers a GREAT insight to the importance and relevance of "new" technology of connecting.
Adam L. Penenberg writes in Viral Loop:
Why do we do it? What explains our BlackBerry-bearing, Twitter-tweeting, Facebook friend with the need for constant connectivity? As facile as it sounds, we do it because we are hard-wired to socialize. It’s in our best interests. One reason we gravitate toward communities is because they multiply the impact of each individual to bring greater prosperity, security, and fulfillment to all. Aristotle believed that “man is a political animal” and we achieve noble actions by living as citizens together. What is politics, however, but the expression of personal interest manifested in the body politic? Two thousand years later Benedictus de Spinoza, a seventeenth-century Dutch philosopher of Portuguese-Jewish descent, expressed the view that men “are scarcely able to lead a solitary life so that the definition of man as a social animal has met with general assent; in fact, men do derive from social life much more convenience than injury.”
Perhaps the answer is even more fundamental than Aristotle, Spinoza, or other philosophers ever imagined. Social networking makes us happy and, online or off, all this congregating is merely a product of biological necessity. Research indicates that engaging with friends helps us live longer and better lives…It didn’t matter if the friends stayed in contact via phone, letter, or email. Just the fact that they had a social network of friends acted as a protective barrier.
What are your thoughts?
yes yes, but.
ReplyDeletei agree wholeheartedly that online communities are as meaningful as our face-to-face communities - sometimes maybe moreso, in that online communities enable us to stay in touch with people far away, reconnect with old friends, and even make contact with like-minded people across the continent or across the globe (people we never would have "known" ten years ago). but. at some point don't those virtual connections begin to impede our face-to-face connections? how is it possible that we - as individuals and as a society - can sustain both sets of connections in a meaningful way when time and energy are limited resources?
(and welcome to the blogosphere.)
someone beat me to a comment!?
ReplyDeleteemily, i have to disagree. i think that we can sustain both sets of connections because they only serve to enhance each other. as human animals, we crave contact. for some of us, the more the better!
(and eric, i'm so proud of you!)
hi phyllis. (nice to virtually meet you.)
ReplyDeletei do believe that we can - and will - sustain both sets of connections. but i also believe that in the process, something somewhere will have to give. and/or that the two sets of connections will become increasingly interconnected in a way that we've only just begun to explore and understand.