Blog 5

Being my age, I have a lot of anecdotal stories to tell about just about everything. About 10 or so years ago, my wife and I went to visit a good friend of mine and his wife in Florida. This was the first time my wife had met this couple. We were there just for the night as we were continuing on to Daytona Beach and Orlando. Within a half hour of us arriving at their place, my friends wife was on AOL in one of the chat rooms showing us all the people she new and telling us their background, where they were from, etc. For the rest of the evening she sat with her back to us while my friend Charlie and I and my wife talked. She occasionally got up to get a drink or to say a few words, but for the most part sat at the computer typing away. After we returned home, Charlie called to apologize for her behavior and said that's all she does any more. He's doing the cooking, cleaning and taking care of the kids and she just chats all the time. They latter divorced and according to him, one of the reasons was her addiction to the chat rooms and how she neglected the home front. I know this one occurrence doesn't speak for all chat room users (and might even sound sexist), but the point is this kind of behavior does happen which falls right in line with the fears expressed in part 1 of the Boase reading. When I first got started on the Internet, before the web browser and the always on internet connection, you dialed up individual text based bbs's, poked around, then disconnected and went on to the next one. I would spend hours online after I got home in the evening calling bbs's all around the country. The weekends were great because I could stay up till the wee hours of the morning and didn't have to worry about going to work the next day. But, I attribute my behavior and Charlie's ex-wife's to the newness of the Internet. Back then it was so new, and to me so fascinating, to know you could communicate with remote people and computers via the phone line. Today, the younger generation expects it and the older generation thinks it old hat.

I don't see how the Internet could do anything other than increase your core and significant ties. It would have to be under very unusual conditions for the Internet to decrease your ties. The fact that Americans still rely heavily on in-person encounters and telephones is encouraging and understandable. Core ties are the people who are closest to you and so would logically lend itself to being the people you have the most in-person contact with, people you build personal, physical bonds with. The Boase article was statistically interesting and the video made interesting references to people differentiating between ‘real world’ friends and ‘online’ friends. The opening steamboat and technology reference also seemed to be true. Overall interesting stuff.