Not much to say

[fbhjr]

My wife asked me to write up my thoughts from the lecture/address we went
to see last night.
I’m not sure I have anything worthwhile to say, but here’s what I’ve got.

I’ve never read the woman’s books.  I didn’t see her on the Cobert Report
or on the cover of Wired magazine (even if it was about the time I was
reading it.)  So, I really can’t say anything about how her talk connected
with her other work.

Her thesis appears to be:
There is a growing trend to use technology as a social barrier between
people instead of a tool to facilitate social contact as she had originally
expected 15 years ago.  She thinks this is bad and that we should be aware
of it as a society and work to reverse this trend.

Sadly, it took her more than an hour of rambling to say that.

I found her talk to be unfocused and often tangential to her main point.
She has done a lot of case studies over the last 15 years and it is the
data from them that she used to reach her conclusion.  But, a discussion of
the real world gender of the person one of her subjects cyber affair
partner really, in my opinion, has little impact on the idea he is using
technology to get away from his wife.
Yes, the person he thinks is a hot young woman interested in him could well
be an 80 year old guy in a retirement home in Florida.  But, at least to
me, it doesn’t matter.
And, when questioned on if cyber cheating is really cheating she said
(after 5 minutes of rambling) that the answer to that question was outside
of the bounds of her study.
I found that a bit of a copout as her thesis is that folks are using
technology to hide from relationships.  And, the young man asking the
question was asking if you couldn’t count cyber relationships as just a new
form of them.  Which you would think would be relevant.  If instead of
hiding from relationships, there is just a new form of them emerging.
My wife did point out that maybe talking about types of cheating at a
Jesuit school wasn’t the best of ideas anyhow, and maybe that was why it
was skipped.

In the last ten minutes she took a sharp turn and almost rejected her own
thesis.  She started going on about corporations getting people’s private
information and what they did with it.  And, that we should all be writing
to our congressional people to put a stop to it.

Not an invalid point.  But, quite a change from the start with “people
should look at how they use technology and make sure they use it in an
emotionally healthy way” to “corporations are causing much of this problem
and we should get the government to stop it.”

I think those are two different issues.  It wasn’t clear if she really did
or not.

And, I’m honestly not sure about the validity of her thesis in the first
place.
She talks about people pushing baby carriages while texting, or playing
Angry Birds on their smartphone while their kids are playing on the
playground as examples of people using technology to distance themselves
from their family.
But, when my father watched us as kids, he sat at his desk and worked on
his projects while we played on the other side of the room.
My sister would bring a book with her when she took us to the playground
and would read while we played.
Our babysitter often worked on her homework while my brother and I watched
TV.
I see no difference in that other than the device used, and I don’t think
that is really relevant to the idea that the person there was doing
something else, not participating.
I agree that people texting each other while attending a funeral is very
impolite.  But, would reading a book be different?  Writing a letter?
Texting in movies is bad.  But, mostly because the light from the
smartphones is disruptive.  If someone could text and I couldn’t tell, then
it won’t matter to me.

She did say that she is not anti-technology.  That she cares for how it is
used, not that it exists at all.
But, I think excuses to not participate have always been there.
Maybe technology makes them more widespread and more accepted.  But, that’s
a big maybe to me.

Comments

[64tbird.livejournal.com]

And then your wife boosted the signal I started regarding a family in desperate need of help of all sorts.

Yeah.

Stupid useless intrawebs keeping us apart instead of bringing us together!

I could write a book of case studies telling you how the internet DOES bring people together, how shared pain is lessened, how shared joy is increased, and how this refutes entropy... Oh yeah, and you might be one of my case studies. :-P

[fbhjr.livejournal.com]

Her point that people should examine how they use devices and make sure they are actually getting what they want out of the is valid.
But, I don't think that applies only to technology or new devices.

But, I do tend to look at these things as tools, not as anything more or less. I like having tools that let me do things. But, they don't determine what I want to do.

There was a time when all of my friends were local to me. We got together almost every day and did things. We shared all sorts of good, bad, easy, and hard times together.
These days I hardly see them. And, most of my communications with them are electronic.

But, we don't all live in the same neighborhood any more. We don't all go to the same school any more.
If anything the tech lets me keep in touch with people I might otherwise lose track of because of distance.

And, it has let me make far more friends, like you, who are far away and I wouldn't have encountered otherwise.