yourspace

YourSpace

by Bob on September 3, 2007

I really wonder about "social interaction networks" such as MySpace, FaceBook, etc.

I am paradoxically writing this on one, my favourite MySpace, but I wonder out loud just what it has brought to me and to others in our lives. I really wonder how real it can get. Or how unreal and even hurting. I see that all the time on the networks. Some people getting hurt by caustic remarks, feigned love, and nasty people.

There clearly are good people, too. But we can't feel them sensibly. I am sitting next to a person who is using a webcam in the internet cafe in Boston and I despite his giggles and smiles, wonder if he has joined Alice through the emotional rabbit hole, too. Remember how the movie "Speed" ended ? It faked out Dennis Hopper's malevolent character by putting an infinite tape loop into the camera on the bus to make it look like people were still in it whilst everyone got off the bus. See ? Illusion is easy to manufacture. Edison did a parlour trick and flipped some image cards and we got motion pictures and virtual (not in the moralistic sense) reality in our present times.

Dr. Sherry Turkle at MIT wonders too about this face of reality on the web. Her seminal work: "Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet". Dr. Turkle also thinks that much interaction on the internet is somewhat therapeutic. Now her other book from 1984 was "The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit". That was an important topic in an Orwellian year.

Despite all this, after some years, I have some regrets and qualms about these interaction networks. I may just go on the wagon.

Oh well. That's tonight's decision