Yes it is true. We are not alone. Not anymore. Why brave the frighteningly vast cyber universe en seule when you can have company? We are social creatures after all. Such was the subject of our latest multimedia pioneering talk by Wayne MacPhail.
The year is 2008, we are now mid voyage in a a cyber odyssey. Web 2.0 has all but taken over. Everything is suddenly clean and clear and crisp. Paths are easily drawn and followed. Extensive tagging and bookmarking mark the trail. We have discovered it is possible to live on the Internet.
The average facebook user is on for 17 minutes a day. The rest of the time in undoubtedly spent on twitter or myspace, del.icio.us, linkedin or digg. Here we are invited to make new connections, reconnect with the lost or just generally stay connected. Due to these new social media devices we all have more friends then ever before. Take facebook for example. I've been a member for about a year now. I have 148 friends and counting. But how many friends do I really have? What constitutes a friend? Are their different levels of friendship? I recently invited 42 people to my birthday party. These are people that I actually see outside of school/work. Now out of these I would say about 10 are what I would consider to be close friends. People I either chat with online frequently or speak to on the phone and actually do social things with. Does that make the others are mere acquaintances? Or should there be a new term for them like "cyber friends"? Some of them exist only in certain worlds for me, at school, snowboarding or kiteboarding. Some of them exist only on facebook for me. We may have been friends once but we will never meet again. Never really care again. My old friend from university found me and added me on facebook, we were the greatest of friends once. She is now married with a 6 month old daughter. I still recall the old friendship and invite her for dinner, parties, the opera. But she can't really exist outside of facebook. I know this now. Our worlds are too different. She will only ever be a cyber friend. Perhaps I should invite her to twitter....
Nobody really reads in the cyber universe. We are all too busy scanning and filtering information. Where would I be without my google homepage and its convenient rss feeds? How would we know what is happening in that strange domain we call reality if it wasn't for the news feeds in our google reader letting us know?
We can live happy fulfilled lives without ever having to speak to anyone. The shy, the introverted, the hopelessly unhappy can be reborn and live a different life on second life. Here we can virtually date, explore, buy virtual goods, and fall in love. Really, a brave new world. Sounds pretty geeky really but anyone can see the appeal. Where do I sign up?
Of course the question is do these things actually make us more social? Or do they just offer a place to hide? A way to avoid physical interaction? Why call when you can type? Why visit when you can just click on a profile? Everything in moderation I suppose. Who knows, but without facebook would I have had 28 happy birthday wishes? No, of course not I would have had 10.
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