John the Monkey
Frivolous Cyclist
- Location
- Crewe
We used to visit relatives when I was a boy (I'm a girl now to save someone the bother) and all I had available was gazing into space, a sudden flu attack or mass murder: any gadget that distracted me from that tedium would have made me a techie in a jiffie.
Personally, I think a couple of things are at play in this thread. One is the fear of the new, which I was trying to point out jocularly with those 18th & 19th century jeremiads about the novel. You can also find it in Susan Greenfield's evidence free warnings about the effects of this sort of interaction on developing brains.
The second, which I think you touch on, is the lifeline this sort of communication offers to people who find social situations difficult, or who simply don't like the things most other people like. As an awkward youngster who didn't particularly like football, or cars, most of my youth was spent awkwardly trying to find people who liked the same bits of Peel's festive 50 that I did. If you're that person today, those communities are ready made, accessible through a piece of technology that you have with you all the time. You can even read those racy novels the authors I quoted denounced (or the improving works they favoured) any time, anywhere via Project Gutenberg using it.
Of course, there's a balance to be struck, and in that, the advance of virtual communities, communication and their enabling technologies is exactly like anything else.