Internet Life
Let me give myself as an example here.
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The time I devote to social activities has been decreasing. Why?
Because the transfer of information (views, lifestyles, facts, anecdotes, news) that usually take places in our social interactions with people, can also be done on the Internet.... I am devoting more and more of my time to the internet where I do exactly this type of transfer of information.
I do it through web surfing, email, chatting, and mailing lists and newsgroups. In websurfing, I do surfing for news, searching for information via google, and looking at people's web pages where I can come to know their life styles and thoughts. Some people have online diaries also called blogs from which I can learn a lot about their lifestyles, anecdotes, opinions, activities etc. And yes slashdot.
From my time on the Internet, I have come to know about more things, issues and gained more general knowledge than ever before.
Once I just found on one person's site that he loves the game of "Set" (a card game) very much. Then I found the same thing on some another person's site. Aroused my curiosity, and google found me the homepage of the Set Game Company. I saw that it has won some awards, and immediately purchased it from that site itself. The game arrived at my house 2-3 days later, and after playing a couple of times, me and my friends have got fond of it. (Its a good game, purchase it) So I got to know of a game that I would probably have never known otherwise.....
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So, what do we see here? As the impact of the internet grows more and more, reaching more and more people, and people start spending a larger proportion of their time on the internet, will the social activities die down ???? People will only use the internet to satisfy all their social needs. And with webcams and videoconferencing becoming common-place, it would reinforce this.
Well there are disadvantages to "internet sociality", there's that lack of personal touch.
And importantly this can not replace many social *activities* - like going out to a restaurant, or to play, or for hiking, or for outing, for a party etc.
But, it can very surely reduce them.
I am afraid that it may make routine chatting (face to face personally - barring at social "activities") almost entirely extinct.
Now when I am chatting with somebody, I realize that what I am getting from him is his journal - which can be online too. The need for interaction is still there, but email and online chatting can curb that out.
That day is not far when you see your friend's latest online journal entry to be:
" Just woke up today, and came online to check out the journals of friends to see what's up with them.
....oh! what a coincidence! Everybody has this same thing as the latest journal entry!"
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