Quinn Cohane
Sociology 022 – In the Facebook Age – Spring 2010 – Dhiraj Murthy

Pro: There’s no different from online and offline relationships- they’re both face to face.

Opp: Many friendships formed online and formed offline- people still want traditional relationships. Strictly online relationships are not as meaningful. In an online relationship, you always wonder if the other person is not being entirely truthful. Online, you don’t have physical cues like hugging, kissing and presentation, and these all add to relationships. You can’t play around with your friends and feel comfortable being in their presence if you just know them through the computer. It’s hard to successfully create a completely new kind of friendship.

Pro: There are pre-existing methods of communication that are both offline and yet not face to face. There are more subtle ways of expressing identity through text messages and you still know who you’re talking to. Online relationships are purely voluntary, while offline relationships are often due to work and family ties and cannot be abandoned. They can be based purely on mutual interest and allow you to emphasize with someone and connect with them. Trust is something experienced by the individual whether the relationship is online or off. People can make true connections if they are willing. There will always be people that are not completely truthful, but if you sense that the other person is being honest then you will believe them.

Opp: There is not enough evidence that allows you to say that most people will be truthful on the Internet. You can never have a meaningful relationship if you can never fully tell what the other person is trying to say. In real world relationships, a signature on a love letter signifies “remember me.” Online, a username signifies “believe me.” Would you rather receive a love letter or have someone tell you “I love you” in person?

Pro: While many online friendships do feel the need to go offline, they start out as “pure” relationships- they are purely platonic and are not based on sexual tension or desire for intimacy. There is more curiosity, mutual interest, empathy and pure listening instead of thoughts like “I wonder if they just want to get in my pants.” Blind dates are similar to chat rooms- you’re meeting the person for the first time and still have no information about them. They can put on as much of a fake persona as someone online can. Online users know that they can’t show their facial expressions, so they use other techniques to describe their feelings that can be transferred across the Internet. In an online community, all that matters to you is how you perceive the other users.

Opp: You do need to have physical cues to fully experience a relationship. People gives off gestures of discomfort or awkwardness, and without being able to see and sense those you won’t realize how the other person is feeling. It’s harder to put on a fake persona in person because the other person can sense physical and verbal cues that you’re lying. People don’t always pay attention to what they write online- look at YouTube video comments. Skype allows you to get more visual cues, but it’s not mobile. Texting allows you to talk wherever you are, but you have to be in front of a computer and in a quiet, private environment to Skype. The physical connnection is a way to tell someone else that they’re not alone. If you have a great online conversation with someone for 2 hours, you’re still going to log off at some point and leave them all alone.

Interestingly, this week’s reading covered some of the exact same points that I discussed in my blog post last week. I swear I didn’t read this article ahead of time. The Witte/Mannon article did mention one topic that my response didn’t cover. It answered one question that I’ve always been curious about: how the Internet began. I know the first computer, ENIAC, was built by the University of Pennsylvania, but how did the Internet become such a phenomenon?

I was not surprised to read that the development of the Internet was the military’s idea. The military is probably constantly working on projects that are far ahead of our time. However, it’s not just the military working on futuristic concepts. While discussing the evolution of the Internet, the article stated, “By the early 1990s, developers were considering ways to deliver new Internet services, ‘including teleconferencing, remote seminars, telescience, and distributed simulation’ (RFC#1633). And by 1996, an Internet standard for the encoding of audio and video data had been released (RFC#1890) and work was beginning on GPS-based addressing and routing (RFC#2009).”

I am fascinated by this information because it proves to me how little I really know about where our technology is coming from. I never would have guessed that teleconferencing was being developed in the 1990s because it has only recently become a part of our mainstream culture. I do remember the days before video chat and Skype (those dark, cold days), but it has become so ingrained in my life that it’s hard to imagine what the world did before it.

I guess it just always surprises me to learn of the achievements made without our current technology. I am not only impressed by what techies were working on two decades ago, but also by what was achieved without computers, machinery, or electricity. I traveled to Peru in December and hiked the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. Along the way, I was awestruck by how preserved and functional the Incan architecture still was. We saw plenty of structures before Machu Picchu that, even after 500 years, were still standing and able to be touched and walked upon. Machu Picchu was just the giant culmination of the Incan talents of stoneworking, terracing and construction. That ancient civilization thrived so long ago, yet I can’t imagine what our world would do today if we lost the use of the Internet and telephones. I guess some people are trying to prepare themselves for the worst by using the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine to free themselves from their online addictions now (thanks Dave).

I am certainly not advocating that we give up our use of technology- I know that I myself would not last more than a day. I just believe that we should remember where we came from. Yes, there was a whole world that existed without some of what we now consider necessities. It had its share of problems, from communication difficulties to disease outbreaks, but it got us to where we are today. For those who miss those simpler days- who says you can’t go “home”?