Here in an interesting article from the Washington Post about the growing feeling of relational isolation in America. Seems not that hard to figure out with the rise of email, instant messenging, myspace (i mean pornspace).com, and other sites like it.
As one who loves his laptop like a third child, it seems to me that in our current technological age we needs to be very careful not to bow to the ease of surfacy relationships and fight for real Biblical community. Are we a sea of people with hundreds of myspace.com friends and an email address book that is full, but no one to go to in the deepest times of need?
4 comments:
interesting blog...i agree, it is very easy to get caught up in "internet" relationships and let real-life warm blooded relationships go...which is sad. it is a great irony, because i feel like a whole world has opened up via blogs, etc. so i guess the key is where we look, how much time we spend online, and being conscious of what we are reading and writing.
Z,
I presented a paper many years ago at a conference regarding internet relationships entitled, "Imagination, Exploration, and Compulsion: Discovery and Loss of Self through the Internet." As you have pointed out, the Internet leads to surface relationships that lack the depth of genuine face to face relationships. Although our social networks are spreading "out," they are not spreading "down." We also lose our self-identity, I believe. Christ was about relationships with people and so should we be.
The main problem that computer related communication lends to itself is the fact that it takes out living life together. We can pick and choose what we want people to know. There is no, "good, bad and the ugly," but only what I let through my filter of life.
Plus it tends to idleness. When face to face you can accomplish task while communicating with one another, but the computer makes the communication the task.
Jason,
If you have a link to your paper I'll post it here.
zach
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