Tuesday, September 25, 2007
September 25th / a.k.a. Post IV
Carly Simon was right. Nobody does it better. I mean, no human body does, that is. However, there is a technological body that can do it better, or maybe, to put it more correctly, help us do it better. Today's "it" (for the purposes of this post) is human communication. Consider the irony: inanimate wires, microchips and plastic assisting flesh and blood humans in being more human. Is face to face communication soon to be a thing of the past? Joseph B. Walther in his article "Computer Mediated Communication: Impersonal, Interpersonal and Hyperpersonal Interaction" points to such a possibility. Does CMC really provide us humans a better platform for human interaction? Mr Walther cites numerous research that supports a phenomonology that CMC is superior to face to face (FtF) communication concluding: " ...a new perspective is offered here--a fully integrated view of CMC taking into account the sender, receiver, channel and feedback as each contributes to hyperpersonal interaction in CMC, interaction that is more desireable than we can often manage FtF (P.28)". I, for one, find it disturbing that interpersonal communication is being left to computers. Can we really call this human interaction? I have a problem with my fellow man's "abdication of real life" (ABORL). [Side note: I just love it when these researchers create their own acronyms, so I made one too]. Is the real world so bad, and are people so socially backward that they can't, or choose not to, exist in this life, but can happily exist virtually in Linden Labs "Second Life"? I just don't get it. Am I hopeless humanist? Does CMC really enhance intercourse? Maybe, just maybe it does, but I ask you this: Can two people fall in love online? I say no, humans can only fall in love in person. Can a person live a real human life in a computer's virtual world? I say no, s/he only live it here in the real world. Communication is indeed a human desire, but ask yourself how much fun would a wedding to, and a honeymoon with, a real person be if it took place in cyberspace?
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I can appreciate your questions about the relationship between online and offline lives, it seems that everyone is grappling with a version of this question on their blogs this week.
At the same time, I want to keep pushing you to think beyond "either/or," which I'm picking up on as a theme across your posts. It seems like an underlying assumption between these either/ors is that the computer is an "other" - not human. Another way of looking at this is to see the computer as a human cultural artifact - made by humans, used by humans, given meaning by humans. As such, CMC offers one tool for human interaction - granted, mediated by machines - across a continuum or range of possible human interactions. Not better or worse, just different, with different affordances and different possibilities. Being a hopeless humanist isn't a bad thing :) - I just want to offer a different point of view.
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