In this time we reside in a constantly rising virtual society. Now from the comfort of your place you can go to the pictures, go off and do some shopping and bet at the casino. In truth there’s a constantly increasing capability to be self-sufficient without ever having to leave the front door. Is this a great thing though ? Are there any problems with this?
One can wonder about the social effects. On one hand it might appear like it is helping folks connect on a level way better and superior to anything formerly. You can connect and re-connect via social networking tools like Facebook. Then you can talk and video-chatting with them thru mediums like Gchat, MSN and Skype. From this viewpoint, it appears fabulous.
But what kind of connection is this? Are we eschewing face to face interaction for a virtual one? In turn and over time will people lose the ability to connect with people face to face? It is already easier to connect virtually that people don’t need any more incentive to have to do it more. Clearly there is a shift to doing things online.
Clearly there’s a shift to doing things on the web. And you must be careful of this. Sure there are many benefits to it but you do not want to lose all fact. A few individuals already have and to threatening has effects on. It’s not all so great.
It’s hard to think about it now but as little as ten years back, online dating was scowled on. It was viewed with contempt as the final resort of the desperate. Only losers would try such a means for finding a partner. Now it’s so satisfactory that new sites are springing up all of the time. Not just general ones but niche ones too.
People’s lives have been changed and dreams have come true and this is the lure that causes people to keep coming back. Of course, for every person who wins, almost a thousand won’t but that doesn’t stop the other 999 from believing that it could be them. For the truth of the matter is that they have as much chance of winning as anyone else. One just has to be careful that one doesn’t allow this to take over one’s life.
That is one problem with the virtual society. That is it easy for things to become blurred and for the virtual society to overtake one’s sense of reality. There are people who spend all weekend playing multiplayer games and after a while this becomes more real to them then everyday life. Things such as Second Life are fun but they are meant to be an alternate reality, by no means are they meant to be a substitute for real life.
Andy Hartfrew is a writer who focuses on the marriage between society and technology. He finds this to be a very interesting subject seeing that it effects almost every one on an individual level. Andy believes that it is important to learn about IT in order to keep up with society in these changing times.
categories: Society,Technology,Internet
Related Blogs
