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LonelyNet (Part Two)
The irony was pretty sharp as reflected in last week's "LonelyNet"discussion. Although by no means a scientific sample, hundreds of the very people portrayed as isolated from human contact by the Internet disagreed.
One of the questions that popped up continuously on Threads and via e-mail was puzzlement over why the Internet is so often portrayed as alarming, isolating, dangerous or de-civilizing.
One of the answers is obvious. The avatars of culture - academics, pundits, journalists - often use outdated notions to try and come to terms with a radically different kind of culture. They like Western Civ, Shakespeare and Classical Music, so if you don't, then culture is declining. They read papers and watched TV, so if you don't, you're withdrawing. The fact that you're doing new and different things, and defining culture and civilization differently, doesn't seem to matter. They link popularity, health and face-to-face relationships. If you don't, human links are being broken.
Thus the Stanford study measured isolation in part by dubious measures like whether you are reading newspapers, hanging out in groups, spenting time with members of your family f2f, watching TV less, or whether or not you shop in stores or online. The study doesn't count virtual contact as human contact. E-mail senders and recipients aren't people. Virtual communities aren't communities. Getting news online doesn't count as getting news. Contact with family online isn't contact with family, but something else.
Yet the hundreds of posts on Threads, almost to a one, suggested that Stanford's researchers must have gone to a different planet. Almost all of the responses, some of them eloquent and powerful, talked about the ways in which people used the Net to connect with friends, family and colleagues - not, as the study suggested, to withdraw from them.
This doesn't mean that some people don't spent more time online than is healthy, or in place of face-to-face contact, or that others aren't obsessive about gaming, programming or computing, which is often a passion, not a hobby.
But the study's main premise, reflected in headlines all over the country last week - that the Internet is promulgating a broad wave of social isolation - seemed completely at odds with the personal experience of the hundreds of people who took the trouble to post messages here and elsewhere on the Web.
The "Matrix" never seemed more on target. Increasingly, we live in parallel worlds.
"What's going on?," e-mailed Jeff from Ann Arbor, "I have the sense I've been reading stories and studies like this my whole life in papers, on TV and from academics and politicians. Yet my own experience couldn't be farther from the truth. Every single day of my life, I e-mail my sick grandmother, who I love very much, and she e-mails me back. No matter what else I do, I do that. I talk to my friends all day on AIM. I keep in touch with friends from high school. I send love notes to my girlfriend who's in another state, and keep the relationship going. I have long philosophical conversations with my Dad, who's better talking online than in person. I talk to my best bud, who's in Ohio. I meet people on MP3.com, and in chat rooms. I talk to other students about school and schoolwork. Is that in the Stanford study?"
No, it isn't. How come?
First, for obvious reasons. The Net is frightening to many of the most entrenched institutions in American life. What people fear, they viscerally attack.
But for the clearest explanation, it helps to look backwards, not forward, even though some dislike invoking history. Almost everyone reading this is part of something frightening and controversial. In one guise or another, technology has affected politics for hundreds of years - the industrial revolution and the rise of a technologically-based industrial society, the rise of the middle class for the first time in the world, mobility provided by cars, trains and planes, the specter of Utopia, raised by people from Jules Verne to Walt Disney, the rise of technologically-empowered elites, the liberation of sexual imagery, the explosion online of religious and spiritual conversations away from organized religion, environmental worries, the horrific toll of hi-tech warfare, the sudden power and importance of young geeks and nerds, the social, cultural and political trauma of rapid changes in the workplace, the rise of pop culture, alienation, leisure time and an explosion in information and the new freedom of individuals to express themselves.
With each passing day, it looks as if the Net, which no one foresaw, may end up being the biggest technological change in human history. So if history is any guide, it will be the most controversial.
Political scientist Langdon Winner:
"Technology and its various manifestations have become virtual obsessions in discussions about politics and society on a wide variety of fronts," he writes in "Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought."
"Social scientists, politicians, bureaucrats, corporate managers, radical students, as well as natural scientists and engineers, are now united in the conclusion that something we call "technology" lies at the core of what is most troublesome in the condition of our world."
For ordinary people, too, change seems to be making life complicated and coming too quickly. The people who create technologies - computing, genetics, nano-technology, artificial intelligence - rarely do a good job of explaining what they're doing to the outside world, and the outside world is increasingly bewildered and unnerved by what these technological elites are doing. People often perceive technology as an oppressive force that poses a direct threat to human freedom, family, and stability.
The philosopher Paul Goodman once suggested that widespread unease about science and technology - from medieval Europe to the Enlightenment to the Industrial Revolution [certainly, to the rise of the Net and Web] - amounts to a religious upheaval similar to that of the Protestant Reformation.
In our time, the rise of new technologies, especially the Net, has triggered a wave of alarm and moral outrage, from concerns about pornography, thievery, addiction, cracking and national security, greed, the theft of intellectual property and last week, to the notion of culture that sees the Internet as pushing withdrawal from humanity itself.
Academics and journalists are often happy to sound alarms about the Net and the Web. Like Wall Street brokers and music and movie industry execs, they feel supplanted by the computer-empowered hordes who are suddenly setting their own agendas and having their own conversations. Politicians are increasingly nervous about so much sudden democracy in a political structure previously dominated by comfortably familiar special interests, from corporations to lobbyists to politician parties to journalists.
People who think nothing of giving their credit cards to strangers in restaurants are anxious about transmitting them online. Even though children are much more likely to be harmed by relatives at home than by going online, online predators are given explosive and completely disproportionate attention by journalists and politicians.
This doesn't mean that all studies and surveys about the Net are wrong, but it does possibly put them in a context that answers Jeff's question: What's going on?
Why are studies from reputable universities and other institutions so completely at odds with our own experiences?
That's my two bytes. Add more of yours below:
Sure, the original study which began this debate was seriously flawed. There is still, however, a lesson we can learn from the disussion which followed. There is a point where you get too much of a good thing, and spending 17 hours a day sitting in front of the computer would qualify.
Like I said in the last forum, the internet is a great medium for gathering information and connecting people, but there is a point where it simply becomes an excuse for naturally introverted people to become shut-ins. You might think that you're living the good life because you're hanging off the greatest collection of raw data ever concieved, but you're really not if that's all you do.
Moderation, as always, is the key -- you can always overdo things. Too much food, too much exercise, too much sex, too much of anything isn't good. It's not healthy to never get outside or get any physical activity. It's not healthy to never interact face to face with other people. You're behaving like one of those people whose life is completely dominated by their significant other -- you're making sacrifices you can't imagine in trade for fairly minimal benefits, but you've become so encompassed by the lifestyle that you can't imagine any other way to live.
There's nothing wrong with net use -- it beats sitting around watching TV any day. But, people, please remember the value of variety. Overspecialize and you'll always encounter problems.
On a personal level, I would again urge you to stop and look up from the screen for a change. Going out and having a few beers with friends isn't the best thing for your body, but it's not going to kill you and could prove extremely valuable in other respects. Going out on the occassional date might not seem like a productive use of time, but there is a reason it's so popular (and I don't just mean sex, but that is a part).
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Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Er, what?
/. post where all the info anyone has is a name or handle that doesn't even need to be real, or in fact attached at all if they choose to post AC or in a study where they need to know your name, sex, age, television viewing habits, how much correspondance you have with your family, and so on?
When did Jon even mention anything about "losers" in his article? I'll admit that Jon's critique of the study isn't very scientific, but neither is the study itself from what I've read (which admitedly, isn't much). When isolation is defined as watching _less_ TV and more time online (whether it's IRCing, usenet or surfing) then there's definately something wrong, for obvious reasons.
As for the anonymity factor: Are people more likely to fudge the truth when their names are attached to something? Yes. But where do you think is more anonymous, in an email or
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Reject
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Reject
reject@metaphorcity dot com
Jon has been expounding this theme since at least his Hotwired days. The fear of the clueless leading them to attack this thing that seems about to take away a little of their power. But he seems to have missed a couple of points here. The first and most obvious is that the attacks have shifted over to the realm of the absurd. The very funny parodies of the Stanford "Study" should have been a giveaway. Mail is good, email is bad? Newspapers are good, news online is bad? This segment of the attack force has really lost whatever grip on reality it ever had.
But I would think that any discussion of attacks on the wired culture should contain at least a mention of the attacks that are actually threatening us. Direct frontal assaults are bound to fail (on the net as in most cases), but the side forays may be our undoing. UCITA, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and stupid software patents are just as absurd as the Stanford Study, but are much more dangerous. In fact the Stanford Study is itself dangerous in that it gives the clueless one more weapon to use in their efforts to destroy this thing we hold so precious.
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation
Information is not Knowledge
I couldn't agree more with the fact that "culture" is an elitist term, and we're out for a divergence or at the very least a huge paradigm shift. In my decade on the Internet (I was around pre-web), I've developed several strong friendships and close personal ties. I was even involved in a year-and-a-half long net romance with someone from the opposite corner of North Dakota. In many ways, it is the relationship by which I measure all others, as she and I were deeply intimate on a mental level. (Of course, pleasures of the flesh did come later.)
Anyway, I think we're heading for a culture shift. For far too long, good culture has been defined in a top-down-matter: the upper crust of society says it is good, so it is good. True, we do see bottom up movements, but quite often their import is denied or warned against by the "cultural elite". With the rise of the web, culture has already become far more democratic than 10 years ago. The web is probably not the stimulus for change, but it is one hell of a catalyst.
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Am I the only one who thinks Microsoft is a misnomer? Perhaps Macrosoft would be a better fit?
I think a lot of this kind of thought comes from people who have never experienced any meaningful dialog on the net. ie they just do not get it.
I know several smart people who just don't get online chat for example. They have no interest and can not figure out why any one else does.
When they think about someone who spends 30+ hours a week of their freetime on a MUD, it must seem to them to be a lonely and sad experience. While to the mudder he/she/it may be having the best social interaction they have ever had.
I personaly think that the TV is the greatest problem technology in this area. As it gives the illusion of social interaction with out being interactive. (and no I do not count the pay per view button) :)
Noel
RootPrompt.org -- Nothing but Unix
kayaking
I'm sick and tired of people bashing Katz for the little things like how long his columns are or the fact that perhaps on a certain time he use Word to write his column. I personnally like to see something with a bit more substance in slashdot instead of pure discussion and a link to another page. John Katz's column brings more to /. than anyother article as it gives you MORE to discuss. you condemn him for using Word. Does a person have access to a linux box all the time? In my experience no and I feel that Katz should have the opertunity to explain himself before judging him.
I really liked the part about people using studies like these because they feel out of control. I look around and see people who are scared of computers and the 'net all the time. Folks seem to be grasping hard at the illusion of control these days. I was reminded recently of this theme in my favorite book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (you can read it online here .) Every time I read this book I get something new. Now, I get things about programming and computers. Anyway, here's a good quote:
That attitude is not hard to come to. You go through a heavy industrial area of a large city and there it all is, the technology. In front of it are high barbed-wire fences, locked gates, signs saying NO TRESPASSING, and beyond, through sooty air, you see ugly strange shapes of metal and brick whose purpose is unknown, and whose masters you will never see. What it's for you don't know, and why it's there, there's no one to tell, and so all you can feel is alienated, estranged, as though you didn't belong there. Who owns and understands this doesn't want you around. All this technology has somehow made you a stranger in your own land. Its very shape and appearance and mysteriousness say, ``Get out.'' You know there's an explanation for all this somewhere and what it's doing undoubtedly serves mankind in some indirect way but that isn't what you see. What you see is the NO TRESPASSING, KEEP OUT signs and not anything serving people but little people, like ants, serving these strange, incomprehensible shapes. And you think, even if I were a part of this, even if I were not a stranger, I would be just another ant serving the shapes. So the final feeling is hostile, and I think that's ultimately what's involved with this otherwise unexplainable attitude of John and Sylvia. Anything to do with valves and shafts and wrenches is a part of that dehumanized world, and they would rather not think about it. They don't want to get into it.
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
I agree with this study in it's premise... that the internet is physically isolating people, causing them to exchange their ideas in a virtual forum as opposed to a physical one (think a slashdot thread as opposed to a town meeting). What I don't agree with is that this is, or will ever be, intellectually ,emotionally, or socially damaging to us as a species. The basic premise behind the Internet is the exchange of ideas and information. Throughout history, mankind has striven to reach the goal of ultimate communication with each other. the Internet is the culmination of those efforts as it exists today (yesterday it was the telephone, before that the newspaper, etc).
Of course, old-world pundits will be frightened of this sociological change, as they always are whenever a paradigm shift in communications comes along. I however, believe that this is a precursor of things to come. Perhaps eventually, ultimate communication will be reached... through an evolution of human consciousness beyond our physical bodies. Weathe ror not this will be into a non-corporeal form of some sort, or will exist as brains linked into a global "cyberspace", who knows. but eventually, it will happen. And no amount of scared old-worled idealists will be able to stop it.
Kent Brockman: Mr. Simpson, how do you respond to the charges that petty vandalism such as graffiti is down eighty percent, while heavy sack-beatings are up a shocking nine hundred percent?
Homer: "Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forty percent of all people know that."
Now that I will be publicly flogged for that statement. I agree with him. While many of us are spending more time online it is not a case of abandoning all of our friends merely a new way to continue to communicate with them. Without programs like IRC,first, then more mainstream AIM and ICQ I would not stay in touch with most of my friends from college. I would not be able to afford to talk to most of them every day. While at work I can get email and post on slashdot rather than staring blankly while my brain reboots. I consider things like this a boom for society. Granted it is a different society but oh well, change can be good. Slowly media types will start to adopt this online phenom as a good thing. Once more and more of them are online. Right now they cater to their execs who are older and less connected and many do not ever use a computer I fear. I know at my last job we had execs that could barely use outlook. It was so funny the guy running one of the top 10 life insurance companies in the world, could not figure out how to open outlook and send email, took me about 2 hours to teach him outlook. People like that see net life as a abomination, until we convert them or they stop being in power we will continue to see these studies.
oh well
I am 31337 or something.
"80% of all purchasing decisions are made on the basis of color."
--Brand Packaging magazine
Serious--I actually saw that stat. Obviously a...bit shortsighted, but what's really scary is that somehow there was a study designed to prove that.
When all you've got is a vested interest in diagnosing physical isolation as personal isolation...
You design your study to get your nail.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
There are bags of resources on everything you want on the net. In one bag I'm your average everyday image of the geek (arrived at 8am, its 7:30 and I'm still at work), I'm reading the Cathedral and the bazaar, I update my PC on my own, it dual boots only for games, I bore everyone senseless with how great my job is and why every one should get into computing. I talk for hours at dinner with friends about the merits of XML/XSL and why Java should have multiple inheritance. Basically I put my girlfriend to sleep.
I spend an age on the internet, I check my email every 30 mins and there is normally something in it, I post to Slashdot and log on at the weekends.
So I must be a social reject. Well I'd like to speak up on behalf of all of those coders, hackers and internet junkies who also live to snowboard, windsurf, jump off cliffs and generally blow our above average salries on the sort of life we dreamed of as a kid. I'm not the sort of hacker who has a problem raising his voice, who can't mingle and finds it difficult to mix at a party. I'm the out-going sort who is interested in everything, be it Shakespeare (last book I read was Henry V PartII), Max Ernst, or my girlfriend being a lingerie designer.
Most of these studies are cut and dried, people who use the internet lack social skills, they don't mix with people. And yet those who work in the world of Open Source email people all over planet earth. I'm sitting in the UK and today I helped out someone in a
In the end Ernest Rutherford was right...
All research in the field of human sciences can be summarised as some do, some don't
The purpose of life is to go on holiday.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
First of all, the concept of "loser" is so highly subjective as to be irrelevant to the discussion. Katz' article doesn't use the word, so critiquing it on that basis is spurious at best.
The point is, a bunch of researchers with a pre-defined notion of acceptable societal behaviour went out, selected a group of people without 'net access, gave them access, and then measured how they spent less time on other things. Given the finite nature of the day, spending any time online would necessitate spending less elsewhere, yet they had the gall to turn around and declare the Internet as a hindrance to social interaction, again based on their own view of what interaction ought to be.
Katz is saying here that he has seen posts and email that tells a different story, one that perhaps the researchers should have taken into account. Does the 'net isolate some people in a negative way? Probably. Are all regular 'net users anti-social? No way!
This was a badly designed study with poorly interpreted data, which was then, of course, presented even worse in the mass media that loves to feed paranoia.
Considering how many ACs post here regularly, and how many did stand up and say that maybe their online time isn't so great for their lives in response to this story, your observation here is incorrect. One guy even did post about how much better his family life was once he cut out a chunk of his 'net time. The point is, much as that may be true for some, evidence here (both named and anonymous) seems to indicate that social interaction is made better for others because of the Internet, and research groups making alarmist declarations of the degradation of society are more of a problem than any electronic medium.
Kimberly "'net goddess" Chapman
I have major depression, and just a few years ago it would have been severe enough to see me hospitalized. At its worst, my depression deprives me of my ability to interract with people in real-time, face-to-face. My mind slows to molasses as I try to figure out what I just heard, what it means, and how I should react to it. That leads to a self-consciousness that is debilitating enough in its own right.
But on the Net, "Nobody Knows You're Depressed". Why? Simply because the pace of interraction is under my control. I can even lurk for a while before jumping in, giving me time to "warm up" a bit. I have the luxury of time on my side, allowing me to read a post as many times as needed for it to sink into my head, and allowing me to take as long as I wish to reply.
Far from isolating me from society and social interraction, the Net is all too often the ONLY social interraction I am capable of!
More detail: I don't have to hassle with sales people and cashiers when I can shop online. In the past there have been times when I ate stale bread merely because I couldn't cope with going to the store. PeaPod fixed that.
Let me reiterate: Without the Net, I doubt I'd be able to take care of myself. I would be in some institution, consuming large quantities of insurance and public money, not to mention countless drugs. But, surprisingly, I'm not! I'm able to earn my living and survive, and I'm able to greet the world on my own terms.
There are those who would degrade my state of existence, or even pity me. Don't! I earn nearly six figures, and I have my friends, family and entertainments, despite my depression.
All due, in large part, to the Net.
The Net acts as a "buffer" between me and the "real" world. A world where the only meaningful alternative is hospitalization. This same buffer allows me to take a slow and gradual approach with therapy and counselling, rather than the hasty treatment and rush to discharge seen in most hospitals. Plus, in a hospital I would not be able to continue to make a living!
The Net represents a technology that is fundamentally connective, not isolative. For me, the Net is a "social prosthesis", much as a hearing aid is to a deaf person. It makes interfacing with the world easier, better, and even possible.
Is the "world" I'm connecting with something other than the "real world"?
For the present, it is the best world I am able to live in.
The worst thing about it? You can't get a hug on the Net.
- Bob
San Diego, CA
I haven't looked at the study in detail, but your dismissal of it is particularly weak. Your evidence? "Well, a bunch of guys emailed me and posted to Slashdot to say that they're not losers." For one, do you really expect people to post en masse saying, "Yeah, I guess I am a loser."?
Your rebuttal is easily invalid for two simple reasons alone:
Gotta give you an "F" on this one, Jon...
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
There's two sides to this. One is that some people use the "square-headed girlfriend" for escape. They don't WANT to interact f2f. When they do, it's about the world in the box. This is, of course, bad, and generally to be avoided.
The flip side is those of us who use the box to augment, add to, facilitate, and generally improve the relationships we already have, or would not have had but for the wonders of modern technology. I know for myself that were it not for the Net I would still be single in Atlanta and miserable rather than married, in Seattle, and reasonably happy and improving. So there.
But there is a third possibility (sorry, Arlo) a third possibility that no one has considered yet.
It's quite obvious to the casual Slashdot reader (which is different from the casual observer) that Stanford ignored the reality of the situation. Nobody has yet bothered to ask why.
I think I know. Flame me if you think I'm out in left field, but here goes:
I think They are scared. "They" are the pointy haired bosses, the university deans, the brokers, everyone who's a middleman and raking in the cash. They see the potential for their power to slip away, for mere mortals to talk directly to God without purchasing an indulgence from the local priesthood. People like Bob Young and Jeff Bezos and a couple gents named Larry and you and me have, not overtly, but just as loudly, nailed our 95 Theses to the doors of Redmond and 1600 Pennsylvania.... and the fertilizer is beginning to hit the rotating ventilation device. But it's no longer politic to simply send in the Knights Templar and squash the revolution. First you have to demonize it in the press. Alternatively you can attempt (Microsoft, Algore, AOL) to co-opt it for yourself.
[skip a bit, brother]
Ultimately it's about control. The Big Bwanas see us scurrying around down here plotting world domination and they don't like that idea because it means they'll have to drive a Neon instead of a Nine-Four-Four. So they get all het up about regulating the net and filtering it and keeping pr0n away from short people and bomb making info out of the hands of those Bearded Fellows (hey, I resemble that remark...) and ultimately grinding it down and mixing it with water and making it into the same kind of Soylent Green we've been sucking off the OTHER Glass Teat since our mothers were in grade school.
Bleah! Pfui! yak! barf. Get that stuff away from me, it rots your brain.
So what are we supposed to do about it anyway?
Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. Keep banging away at your Open Source projects, keep hacking on wireless internet, keep sending those checks to EFF and friends, and above all, don't let the bastards get you down. Don't even let them slow you down. If it's obvious to you that they aren't interested in listening, put it in granny low, sound the horn, and floor it. They were warned.
The 21st century is coming thru, boys and girls, and we are in the driver's seat. Lead, follow, or get out of the way.
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My name.... is NEO!
Oddly enough, despite the often held belief that computers and internet are for the young, it's the elderly who are really getting their money's worth. The internet allows those people unable to get around easily to meet and talk to people of similar ages and with similar experiences. When you reach an age where most of your friends have passed on it's nice to have a place where you can make new friends.
Yes. I no longer meet my neighbors. Thanks to the internet I am able to keep in touch with friends who actually know who Voltaire is. I can discuss my latest problems with my child with my friends two time zones away, who also have a child of the same age. I can communicate with people of a similar mind and IQ regardless of their age, race, religion, profession, or location. I can have my opinions challenged and even rated on Slashdot.
I met my wife on a WWIV BBS. If it hadn't been for the interaction we obviously didn't have over the modem lines I would have never married her...
I live in Nebraska. My son (age 7 months) has grandparents in Washington and Seattle. We have friends and family all over the U.S. (plus a few Aussies). I can put his latest photos on his web page and everyone can see him without me trying to send photos all over heck and creation.
I have come to a conclusion. The study at Standford was done by human beings, and published on the interent. As I have not had physical contact with these human beings, I cannot possibly be considered to have interacted with them. Therefore I cannot have been influenced by them. Therefore I cannot consider myself to have been informed by their research. Therefore their study is meaningless to me and to all others who have seen it.
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No Zen is good zen