It seems that an expert has claimed that ‘Online networking harms health’. Dr Aric Sigman, whose exact qualifications have not been specified, says ‘That they set out to enrich lives but end up keeping people apart.’ Read the full story here.
Now I’m not an expert, I don’t even have a Facebook account, (I’ve always been concerned about their Privacy policy) and have no interest in MySpace or LinkedIn (Although I have a LinkedIn account for professional reasons) so I don’t really feel that I can talk about the benefits or costs of any of these sites. However, I do have an opinion on our species interacting ‘on-line’ so to speak.
I think it is a good thing. More and more people are moving to conference calls rather than meetings, video conferencing rather than flying thousands of miles, Emails rather than sending letters. Each providing benefits for the companies and the employees. The environment gets a boost as well, less flights and fuel used in cars. What can be wrong with that?
Then we have the benefits of not having face to face contact. We have more time to complete other tasks as we have less travel time. We don’t get the million and one illnesses that are making the rounds. We won’t bring them back to our shores and ensure that they get spread around there. It would be interesting to see the actual numbers for illness statistics sorted into those that meet the public and the back office people.
The trend is there to see and I can only see it increasing as we perform more of our interaction from the privacy of our home. This government has systematically destroyed any social life outside close friends and close family. Their destruction of pubs is almost complete. As we retreat into our houses we are forced to use alternative means to meet our natural social requirements. So say goodbye to the bad boy attitude and start getting to string a few words together coherently for your web ‘dates’. Boy am I glad I’m out of that arena.
In the future though the chances are we won’t really interact with people outside our immediate circle. We don’t seem to be suffering too bad from it where it happens now. We are adaptable you see and this is just another, minor, adaptation we are facing from the computer age and as we move into the space age face to face meetings will be practically impossible with those outside our immediate group/family/clan whatever. There will still be face to face activity but not as much as over the last 40 years and probably about the same as it was before that where people didn’t get about much. WW1 and WW2 being the peak of our face to face meetings and I didn’t see those times being too healthy for our species.
Now Dr Aric Sigman’s actually concern is that we will suffer from health problems as serious as cancer, strokes, heart disease, and dementia. All of these we are suffering from now while social websites are just a few years old. What caused all those diseases before social networking sites? OK then. So are these going to go away if we banned (I’m sure we are heading there) all social interaction over the web? Nope, thought not.
The fact is that interaction over the web is going to increase. There will be changes caused by this. Mainly physical characteristics favoured by face to face will be replaced by mental characteristics as we have our initial relationships on line. We will adapt and another part of our evolution will be completed. Who knows where that will lead us? To a weaker species as physical characteristics needed for survival are replaced by the ability to string a few sentences together or a stronger more intelligent species where physical attributes are performed by machines.
Looks like we will be finding out sooner than we think as Climate Change and government policy forces along these changes at an unnatural rate.
Evolution happens in strange ways
It seems that an expert has claimed that ‘Online networking harms health’. Dr Aric Sigman, whose exact qualifications have not been specified, says ‘That they set out to enrich lives but end up keeping people apart.’ Read the full story here.
Now I’m not an expert, I don’t even have a Facebook account, (I’ve always been concerned about their Privacy policy) and have no interest in MySpace or LinkedIn (Although I have a LinkedIn account for professional reasons) so I don’t really feel that I can talk about the benefits or costs of any of these sites. However, I do have an opinion on our species interacting ‘on-line’ so to speak.
I think it is a good thing. More and more people are moving to conference calls rather than meetings, video conferencing rather than flying thousands of miles, Emails rather than sending letters. Each providing benefits for the companies and the employees. The environment gets a boost as well, less flights and fuel used in cars. What can be wrong with that?
Then we have the benefits of not having face to face contact. We have more time to complete other tasks as we have less travel time. We don’t get the million and one illnesses that are making the rounds. We won’t bring them back to our shores and ensure that they get spread around there. It would be interesting to see the actual numbers for illness statistics sorted into those that meet the public and the back office people.
The trend is there to see and I can only see it increasing as we perform more of our interaction from the privacy of our home. This government has systematically destroyed any social life outside close friends and close family. Their destruction of pubs is almost complete. As we retreat into our houses we are forced to use alternative means to meet our natural social requirements. So say goodbye to the bad boy attitude and start getting to string a few words together coherently for your web ‘dates’. Boy am I glad I’m out of that arena.
In the future though the chances are we won’t really interact with people outside our immediate circle. We don’t seem to be suffering too bad from it where it happens now. We are adaptable you see and this is just another, minor, adaptation we are facing from the computer age and as we move into the space age face to face meetings will be practically impossible with those outside our immediate group/family/clan whatever. There will still be face to face activity but not as much as over the last 40 years and probably about the same as it was before that where people didn’t get about much. WW1 and WW2 being the peak of our face to face meetings and I didn’t see those times being too healthy for our species.
Now Dr Aric Sigman’s actually concern is that we will suffer from health problems as serious as cancer, strokes, heart disease, and dementia. All of these we are suffering from now while social websites are just a few years old. What caused all those diseases before social networking sites? OK then. So are these going to go away if we banned (I’m sure we are heading there) all social interaction over the web? Nope, thought not.
The fact is that interaction over the web is going to increase. There will be changes caused by this. Mainly physical characteristics favoured by face to face will be replaced by mental characteristics as we have our initial relationships on line. We will adapt and another part of our evolution will be completed. Who knows where that will lead us? To a weaker species as physical characteristics needed for survival are replaced by the ability to string a few sentences together or a stronger more intelligent species where physical attributes are performed by machines.
Looks like we will be finding out sooner than we think as Climate Change and government policy forces along these changes at an unnatural rate.