I just unfriended my remaining three Facebook friends. If you were one of them, please take no offense. Facebook friendship isn't friendship, and Facebook unfriending isn't the termination of a friendship. What prompted this was an email from Facebook about 82 friend requests. These are all being ignored, so if you're among the 82, also please take no offense. I want to have friends but not Facebook friends.
I don't use Facebook almost at all. I much prefer ordinary email for private stuff and blog discussion for public stuff. I need to keep a Facebook account, however, if only because there are a few businesses and other organizations that have no way of being electronically contacted except through Facebook.
6 comments:
I was recently playing one of those parlor games where you ask each other questions out of a box. I got "What technological innovation that most people regard as an improvement do you regard as a chore or a bore?" My answer: social media.
Alex:
Good on you! I don't have a Facebook account. One of the main reasons is that I don't want to friend half the world, because half the world ain't my friend. And you're quite right in that Facebook friendship isn't friendship. If we want to have meaningful friendships we ought to go back to what we had before all this social networking stuff, when we either called up our friends or sat down with paper and pen and wrote them letters. Funny how we don't call or write anyone anymore. The next big reason just as important as the first - there's no privacy on the internet and social networking is one of the big violators of privacy. Lastly, anything stupid you put in cyberspace stays in cyberspace for eternity. Does any one really want a prospective employer googling their name and finding a picture of them passed out drunk at a party posed or exposed in some embarrassing manner that has been passed around the internet by that half of the world they friended on Facebook?
Heath:
In response to your post on technological innovations, I agree with the Amish on some things. Before the Amish accept or reject an innovation, they first determine whether or not this innovation will help or harm their community. Will it foster unity and togetherness in the community or pull it apart. Let's look at some examples:
1. The horse drawn buggies that Amish are famous for. How spread out a community is depends roughly on how far you can drive in an hour. With an car you can go about 50 to 70 miles. With a horse drawn buggy the distance is effectively cut down to 10 miles. So a horse drawn buggy is better at keeping a community together than a car.
2. Power tools. I know an Amish guy who has a harness repair and saddle shop. He uses air driven power tools. For lighting there are sky lights and pressurized kerosene lamps. Again with any tools it depends on the Amish community on what is permitted or not. Using tools that require more than one person to operate builds the community because people must work together and interact, using tools that require only one person to operate does not because people then work individually.
3. Electronic communications. Do they help or hurt the community. Some things like cell phone are making their way in when need for construction work done with non-Amish or other business done with non-Amish. Generally there are phone booths in the country side for emergency type calling. Things like radio, TV and internet are out because they allow outside influences which a potentially disruptive or destructive in.
4. Staying off the power grid. Not a bad idea, really. Best thing about that is no electric bill. A very enviable thing is that after a winter storm blows through and the power is out for a few days. They're the ones not living in the dark and they are staying quite warm.
The Amish are not controlled by technology, but are controlling how they will allow technology to affect them.
Heath:
In my time, I have a learned a lot from discussion forums, listserv mailing lists and Usenet. So, social media have been quite useful to me. Just not Facebook.
I have mixed feelings about the Internet and social networking. On the plus side, I have learned a lot. Thanks to browsing the Internet, I've come upon this blog. Thanks to the Internet, I can research anything almost instantaneously and that has been a great boon. It beats the old fashioned digging in the library business. When I did work in aircraft propulsion related specifications, the Internet was a great help. I remember the days when things were far more tedious with specifications and you had to use micro film. Those were the cave man days, but some of the best specs got written back then.
Now for the downside of the Internet:
1. The scourge of Internet porn addiction and the ease with which minors can access the material from their own homes or other places once considered safe from such things. There is also an increased intensity and perversity in what's available.
2. Internet and E-mail have been a boon to pedophile predators who target vulnerable kids. The Internet and E-mail have been a boon to all manner of other predators like identity thieves.
3. Websites that actually support self-destructive behavior and lifestyles. Such as websites that encourage anorexics in self destructive behavior and similar type things. Here is a link:
http://www.sirc.org/articles/totally_in_control2.shtml
Here is another link:
http://www.healthyplace.com/abuse/self-injury/why-pro-self-injury-pro-self-harm-websites-are-dangerous/
4. Blurred boundaries between people that electronic communications foster, such as Facebook "friending". At the same time there is no development of true depth to relationships formed on line.
5. What gets put into cyberspace will stay there for eternity and can take on a life of its own. Deleting things is not enough.
6. Cyber bullying. There was bullying when I was in junior high School. I didn't see so much of it in my high school though. The victims of bullying had a safe place and temporary refuge - the inside of their homes. Cyberspace removes this safe place. The Internet is also a force multiplier for communications, and in the hands of immature bullies it is a weapon of mass destruction.
7. Internet addiction and addiction to on line gaming.
By "social media" I mean technological media whose purpose is socializing. I too have learned a lot from group blogs, etc.
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