Technology has been known to drive costs down and increase efficiency. You see it everywhere from hi-tech machinery in huge manufacturing plants to simple technology in your home/office. But there's one area where you could argue that the declining cost has actually made it more inefficient. I'm talking about the cost of communication. Now, dont' get me wrong, I really think that cell phones, email, fax etc help us work and live more efficiently.
But I'm pointing more towards the social aspect of communication. Usually the cost of communicating to somebody is a signal of how important you consider that dialog to be. For example, There is a difference between taking out time to go to a friend's house to say hi, compared to writing a two liner comment on somebody's myspace/facebook profile. Now it might seem that I'm comparing apples with oranges, but lets look at how most teenagers and a lot of people in their twenties are managing their social network.
I keep in touch with my 100+ friends using facebook. 60% of the people are those that I haven't talked offline in years. 30% of them are people that I barely know and have met only a couple of times. But I usually never forget to wish them on their birthdays because facebook conveniently reminds me on the right day. And all I have to do is put in a quick 'Happy Birthday' on their profile and Im done. I find out about their graduations, weddings, kids being born .... all right away and I get to congratulate them by putting comments on their pictures or posts on their profile. If I feel like I haven't talked to somebody in a while, I feel obligated to send them a short 'Whats up' message every couple of months and they reply back with an equally obligatory reply which doesn't say much but satisfies the requirement that we keep in touch. So in effect I communicate with my close friends/family in the exact same way that I communicate with friends I barely know. I can post about all the drama in my life on my blog instead of discussing it in person with my closest friends/family.
You see where I'm going with this? If you take away this whole social networks/IM thing, I would be forced to narrow my close friends/colleagues circle to about 20-30 people and actually meet them or talk to them on the phone more often. The socialization would be real (and not fake), deeper and more healthy. The fact that technology has made it so easy to communicate, it's becoming harder to express the effort or thought that you've put into that particular dialog.
I guess these are some of the negative side effects of making it so easy to communicate with the rest of the world. Now I've seriously thought about quiting facebook (because it can get addicting) but then I dont do it because I dont want to be out of touch with about half of my family/friends who live on the other side of the world. Plus, I need to something to do to waste time while I'm at work .. right? :P
2 comments:
hmm... gud stuff ...
bt I think there is no problem in writing few words to frens you haven't met them for ages, and this is the best thingy about all those social networking web sites and IMs. when u get few words from those frens, you actually feel happy that somebody remembers you. But this is also a fact, its leading to a disease or fobia (im not sure what is it called), in which you always wait for a call, wait an email, wait for a small msg or scra :) ... like me :D ... anyways... its not that bad ... use when u have jus min. rite ?
yeah .. I agree that it's very useful for keeping in touch with far away friends ...
But I still think that the continuing decline in the cost of communication can sometimes undermine the value or importance that you put in that particular communication.
Post a Comment