Digg this - social networking and other ways to "waste time"
Online social networking is an interesting phenomena. It has grown from the realms of the geeky hacker tanned individuals into a world wide online sub culture of people with what seems to be endless hours to spare to write, upload and comment on other people's news stories. Millions of people it seems are whiling away their lives inside their computers. It could be argued that so am - in creating this resource and telling you this. But I do have a life outside of the network - no honest I do.
This of course begs the question - what on earth were these people doing before everyone had access to a personal computer and the internet. Did they pick up the phone and talk to people? Did they spend time with their families or shut up inside bedrooms reading books and magazines under the bed clothes with the torch? You tell me - I'm darned if I know. But as electronic gadgetry has connected us to more people, we have become faceless, with more than one screen name, so we hardly know who we are anymore. We can send e-cards for birthdays, and e-flowers from online stores, we can even do our grocery shopping from the comfort of our air-conditioned lives.
Yet what are we doing with all this extra time we are saving by shopping and living online? Like those labour saving devices that were supposed to take the drudgery out of keeping the house clean. Whilst they may have done, they too spurred a complete shift in behavioural patterns that saw people grow wider and less healthy as they replaced hand washing with the automatic, and pegging out washing with a tumble dryer. And what did we replace it with? The TV and the Internet. Faceless people watching other faceless people living faceless lives.
It sounds like I hate it - but I don't I find it all fascinating. Notjust the sub-culture (of which my children are very much a part), but it has given me access to the world's literature, and I am in awe of how much stuff is being written. And I have come to the sad conclusion there will never be enough time to read everything I want to read, or see everything i want to see - especially if I want to be able to turn off the computer and get some fresh air as well.
So how about you? What are you not doing when you are sitting in front of a computer - wasting time in the social networking scene? And then you have to ask if you are willing to get to the end of your life - and yes there will come a time when you get to lie down in a great big wooden box and get stuffed into the ground with a tonne of soil resting on your bones. ...whether or not you might have done a bit more with your working for a dying....cos it can hardly be called "living" now can it?
February 2, 2007 at 13:53
Reader Comments (1)
While it may be spurious exchanges of info in possibly a 'chat sense or lighthearted nature' at the moment- there is vast potential
It may take awhile as most chat groups seem to be very focussed and in fact generally quite small for the resources put in to them - it will be interesting to see how things work for the future, it will continue to be a slow growth path until our kids our fully ensconced
in "Vista ready" fridge freezers........ Xp toasters and mega - phones