Geek is the future?
In an era of always-on internet, personal computers, mobile phones, and instant messaging – not to mention the still prevailing drugs sex and rock ‘n’ roll – society has become very distant from its former roots. People are finding themselves more and more reliant on new technologies, like the mobile phone, to communicate with one another and hold conversations that should and traditionally would have been held face to face. This may seem all well and good for most people, however people are blind, and they don’t know what is good for them. So they just use the technology. Obviously this concept doesn’t factor in everybody, and there will be exceptions to this hypothesis, so to make understanding easier, we’ll just forget about these exceptions
Modern day society as we know now still has ingredients from the early 1900’s. Everything we know and use today somehow originated from an idea that somebody had back then. Electricity had just been thought of, the motor car became widespread, medical break throughs were happening on a regular basis and many other life changing events were occurring. But life back then was simple, people did things for other people, everybody knew each everybody else, it was very much a ‘community’.
21st Century life is much different, almost everybody keeps to them selves whilst in public, with the occasional “How’s it goin’?” or “G’day” to kill the silence during those awkward moments between individuals, and the traditional acts of chivalry that rarely occurs, even rarer, a full blown conversation with complete strangers.
With society tending towards introversion, one would begin to wonder, how are people filling this void, where are the people socializing?
Some of people, will probably go home, talk to their families about their day, catch up on the day’s news, and then sit down, check their emails… check the thread they posted that morning on a forum, read all the comments people made about what they had to say then proceed to reply to those comments. Then they will engage in an online conversation with somebody whom they probably know in ‘real’ life (like a girlfriend, best friend, class mates, etc…), but unlike their face to face conversation – the topic most likely be of something much different, deeper, even more intimate. The things that they say usually aren’t a fair reflection on how they are face to face, either for the better or the worse, but nevertheless a difference is had in the two types of communication.
This behavior doesn’t limit itself to this scenario either, but it can expand to many other types of text based communication. This behavior has even been the subject of many psychological research experiments, and has been dubbed “The Online Disinhibition Effect” (Suler, 2005).
The Online Disinhibition Effect is well known among society, but they probably just haven’t put a name to it. The Online Disinhibition Effect is specifically, according to Dr Suler, the act of when people say and do things in cyberspace that they wouldn’t ordinarily say or do in the face to face world. This is due to the fact people become more uninhibited online, and express themselves more freely.
This affects almost everybody who use’s the internet, and text messages alike, whether almost everybody wants to admit it or not. Every day people tell their loved ones that “they love them”, or they tell others news that in any other circumstance would be hard to tell (eg. Breakups). Similarly people whom are normally extremely introverted (read geeks) benefit from this greatly, as they develop vastly elaborate online personalities in online communities where it does not really matter how you behave in real life, but more on your mind, the way you think, your relative intelligence, and your ability to act as a intellectual model for people who may not be as smart – completely ajar from how most of everyday society works where it is much the opposite in that it matters more about how you present yourself as a person and other various traits that we have in society (generally in society, first judgment is made on looks, not personality). This is not to say judgment isn’t made on personality however, as stated in Social Psychology (Bordens & Horowitz, p125, 2002) This means that in limited cases the Online Disinhibition Effect (ODE), can infact help people ‘if’ they have low self esteem from extreme lack of friends and so forth.
However as Dr Suler states, “if people prefer to communicate via wires and circuits, there must be something wrong with them”.(Suler, 2004) Ángel J. Gordo-López also agree’s with this statement to a degree (Lopéz, 64, 1999). This statement is very debatable in my view, because who is to say the people ‘prefer’ to be communicating via the wires and circuits, where it may well be more of a case that it’s just much easier to communicate via the wires and circuits.
Another thing that needs to be factored in, is whether the ODE is removing aspects of face to face communication from distribution, but merely, adding a dimension of communication that was never there in the first place.
The ODE has a lot of different operational aspects to why it is so too.
Anonymity, gives the user the ability to interact with people, without them ever knowing who you are; this makes it easy for people to say things about topics.
Asynchronicity of communication, as it isn’t in real time, users are given time to think about what they are about to say (re-read, edit, read again, erase, publish) much like an Essay, which is essentially what online communication is, an Essay.
One thing that I commonly experience with respect to the ODE is that, I’m generally a lot more extroverted online, and tend to tell people a lot more things then normal, thus originated comments from others like “I feel like I could tell you anything when I talk to you on here” and other words rearranged much to the same effect. Experience’s such as this could bring one to do a little self discovery, and question who they truly are, with people seeming so different online who’s to know what’s real. This is infact a common thing too, people using the internet as a self discovery tool it says so right here in The Internet and the Society, by James Slevin (p174, 2000).
The bad thing about this is for people who try to use the internet as a social pick up point for meeting new people. People seem so great online, they portray themselves as the nicest person in the world, and when they arrange to meet in the ‘real’ world and it appears that all the features that were expected, were in fact non existent disappointment is but the natural reaction. So the problem arises of False Portrayal of Character. This isn’t a problem uniquely involved with an online environment, but it’s far more common, and much easier to do online. As such, it could be easy to give somebody your much loved trust, and let go of information that really shouldn’t have been let go of – All just part of the ODE. In an extreme case, this could actually work out and become good, if both (if not more) parties were to all falsely portray themselves, and when/if a meeting was arranged out of cyberspace, and it turned out they all lied, it probably wouldn’t be so bad.
The most wide spread and common of the ‘online’ communication technologies would defiantly have to be SMS (Short Message Service). With the greater half of the population in possession of mobile phones, everybody has access to it, which makes it a very easy way to communicate effectively, and it has the same anonymity as other cyber communications. This effectively adds the final dimension to communication “deep thoughts”. Deep thoughts are the thoughts that people always think, but never say. Due to the ODE people part with these thoughts, and let others know how they feel, but generally only ever via an SMS (or any other form mentioned here) Christine Hine reinforces my view on this in her book Virtual Enthnography (p50, 2000). This is almost like letting people invade your mind, leaving yourself as an open book and letting people read your inner workings. Which can either be good or bad depending on the reader.
Myself, I much prefer face to face communication, as it can be much more expressive then text, as sometimes text just isn’t enough to convey a feeling; it’s very easy to run out of the right words to use, and unless what your writing about is well thought out, it can also be read incorrectly, and be interpreted the wrong way, this is especially the way with text messages, and the lingo where there is acronyms for everything but not everybody knows them. In face to face communication questions can be asked and answered while the general feeling is still the same, a topic can be spoken about without being side tracked too much, and without being shortened. For example, this Essay would have been much better spoken. Speaking is natural.
Bibliography
http://www.bps.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/releases$/social-psychology-section/is-it-possible-to-hold-a-text-message-conversation.cfm“The findings show that text messages can be used to hold extensive conversations which can extend over hours or even days.”
http://www.enotalone.com/article/3209.html “The critics say it can't compare to real relationships - and if some people prefer communicating with others via wires and circuits, there must be something wrong with them. They must be addicted. They must fear the challenging intimacy of real relationships.”
http://www.enotalone.com/article/2458.html The Online Disinhibition Effect “It's well known that people say and do things in cyberspace that they wouldn't ordinarily say or do in the face-to-face world”
http://www.bharatbhasha.com/communication.php/19961 “Texting is a new form of online communication”
http://psydok.sulb.uni-saarland.de/volltexte/2004/117/html/psycyber/disinhibit.html the online Disinhibition effect
Christine Hine,Virtual Entnography , 2000
Kenneth S. Bordons & Irwin A. Horowitz, Social psychology Second Edition, 2002
James Slevin, The Internet And Society, 2000
Douglas Shuler and Peter Day, Shaping the Network and Society, 1999
Ángel J. Gordo-López, Cyber Psychology, 1999
