As I mentioned back in December, I’m teaching creative nonfiction at Carleton College this winter. (The course description is in this post.) Recently we were talking about how to attribute quotes and I said:
“In ten years, all this talk of ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ will be gone. People will spend so much time online—and computing will be so ubiquitous—that people won’t bother making the distinction between a Facebook friend and a ‘real’ friend. It’ll all just merge together . . . but for now you’ll want to call out that difference.”
Most of the students laughed, but it was an uncomfortable laughter. A couple of them looked horrified, as if they didn’t want me even joking about it.
I was probably 25% kidding and 75% serious, but after the brief discussion we had I may have to revise those numbers. Conventional wisdom says that young people and technology go together like peas and carrots. But it’s not that simple.
If you really start talking to young people about computers, the Internet, etc. you’ll find it can be just as complicated for them as it is for us.
Score one for the humans.
Isn’t the kind of the heart of the issue–
“Score one for the humans”?
I don’t know about everyone else, but my internet buddies claim to be humans, and the few who’ve bled over into RL (real life) have turned out to be just that.
Whether online or in RL aren’t we all just striving for that good old human contact and connectivity?
(My 70 y/o parents are totally freaked out by this and call everyone I know online “internet weirdos”, which is hilarious since I socialize almost exclusively with other writers.)
I love that phrase “RL.”
I also like “internet weirdos.”
Fortunately, they’re not mutually exclusive.
I use RL all the time.
I don’t distinguish much between my face friends and my internet friendships. Sometimes I communicate more with my internet friends.