Is social networking working?

Facebook is a form of modern madness:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/22/social-networking-cyber-scepticism-twitter

What do you think?

As communicaion gets easier, it seems to be valued less.

It's a tool. How useful it is/isn't is in how you use it.

Get ready for this one - I agree with Chris.

It can be a valuable tool, but misused, it can turn into an invasion of privacy.

Ann

alj wrote:

Get ready for this one - I agree with Chris.

It can be a valuable tool, but misused, it can turn into an invasion of privacy.

Ann

Actually we agree on more than you think. I just don't express all my thoughts here.

It is as already said a tool. I think of it more like a digital notice board.
It seems to be used more for family and friend reunion.
I have been brought in touch with old school friend via FB.

This article was a lot of hot air. Only this paragraph made sense:

"He also pointed out that the "real world" that many social media critics hark back to never really existed. Before everyone travelled on the bus or train with their heads buried in an iPad or a smart phone, they usually just travelled in silence. "We did not see people spontaneously talking to strangers. They were just keeping to themselves," Kist said."

Bingo. Pre-internet and cellphone, I used to commute a lot, and few on the bus ever talked to each other. We all read books, newspapers, or had earphones plugged in for audio tapes (books on tape, language lessons, music).

True, you go to a Starbucks and everyone's on a laptop. So? They want to get out of the house and still get work done. You want to talk to people, go to a club. No one is plugged into a laptop or headset there.

Oh, I agree with the statement about bus/train passengers travelling in silence. No change there. The biggest difference, as I see it, is that talking to friends used to be free. We had telephones and we made social calls but not on a daily/hourly basis. I see young people walking along the street with a friend while talking on a mobile phone to another friend. Walking with one friend and paying to talk to another -- this has to be a form of madness.

I agree with you, Shelagh.
In personal communication, giving fulll attention to the person you're speaking with is simple courtesy.
It's a lot like someone shaking your hand and looking elsewhere. They make you feel unimportant or insignificant. Why bother talking if you are so uninterested in the person you're pretending to speak with?

Yes, commincation has been facilitated with technology, but there is much that has been lost. Visiting a friend instead of sending an email has more value.
Having a phone stuck to your head, giving little attention to who you are speaking with and even less attention to your surroundings is another loss.
Having a head stuck in a book or newspaper while traveling on public transportation was a method of killing time. Much of it was habit as well as wanting to fit in. Opportunities are lost when we are not aware of our surroundings. Technology is not the solution to that problem. Being aware of who we are, where we are, is a personal matter and choice.

Simply my opinion. I like this forum that technology provided, however I can hit the shut-down key when I choose and give attention to what's happening in the present moment.
Sometimes my wife insists on it.

It is downright rude. Unless there is an emergency, I see no reason to interrupt one conversation to take another one.

I waited a long time before I got a cell phone, and then, I had it just for emergencies. That was before I discovered smart phones. Now my iphone is my only phone, and it's an older model refurbished one, and I only subscribe to the basic package. I rarely text, and when I do, it's to answer something sent to me that seems important.

But my iphone is my organizer, shopping list, dictionary (even English to Spanish these days ), cookbook, book reader, game player, youtube, etc.

Occasionally, (this is true) I talk to other people over it. I've never been a telephone person, and still am not. What is most annoying to me is that bluetooth thing.

Ann

Quote :

It is downright rude. Unless there is an emergency, I see no reason to interrupt one conversation to take another one.

When did call waiting appear, in the late '70's? I always thought that was rude, but clearly most people thought otherwise. What we're seeing now is just another form of it.

On PBS's "Digital Nation" series they interview college students who discuss taking phone calls while talking to others. The consensus was that they all understand it, and are tolerant of it. It wasn't perceived as rude.

Rude or not, it's still paying to talk to someone when there are other people around to talk to for free. Madness.

Btw, no one should ever believe that what they have to say is important enough to pay to say it.

Another rude thing that people using cell phones fail to acknowledge is that their conversations are annoying to others. Receiving calls in restuarants is just one example. At one time, and it may still be true, people would have other call them at a specific time so they could take the call feel important. Lots of insecure people still play those games.

Several years ago, my wife and I were on vacation in the Alps. During the complimentary breakfast buffet, a lady at the next table got a call. She talked loudly annoying everyone. When she finished, I said loud enough for her to hear, "I think I'll go and get my cigar and have that with my coffee." The woman gave me a dirty look. I got up and went to the toilet. When I returned the couple had departed. I figured, if she was polluting the air with noise, I would threaten to pollute her air space with smoke. I don't smoke cigars, however at that time we both smoked cigarettes. Would have loved to blow smoke in her direction.

Quote :

Facebook is a form of modern madness:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/22/social-networking-cyber-scepticism-twitter
What do you think?

living next to an old age home, and still haunted by those memories of his mother surrounded by a bunch of lone silent old folk parked forgottenly in front of a droning television, the goblin's attitude remains one that normal socializing ill serves the old here, saying "...and perhaps facebook is not the answer either, since facebook too is very dependent of visuals such as ones looks and status, etc., so just give me forumland, let me hide my age and looks for their superficial irrelevance to our communication now...", in fact, since the goblin was the only one in the bistro this wet dull gray morning, he had asked the owner to turn off the pop music for once, whereupon a silence reminiscent of a library had taken over from there then, yet within this silence his mind eagerly raced across those written words typed upon the open slot once more, saying "...so why shout when you can talk, and why talk when you can write it down, and why just write when you can readily communicate it across forumland, yet I can still shout where need be, but do I really need to shout where you can hear my voice clearly through these words you read of me..."