Week Six Blog Entry: Changing Social Connections?

I think Americans today are more isolated due to technology. Technology allows us to be more transient; we can work remotely and live anywhere. And with that, we see the physical distances increase between friends and loved ones. Although we can communicate across the distance with technology (email, facebook, text message, twitter, skype, digital photos, youtube, etc), it cannot ever compare to the closeness we feel with face-to face relationships. Emailing someone far away is not the same thing as them bringing you chicken soup. And having many casual relationships will never bring the same meaning as having a handful of deep friendships in which you can share things that are important to you.

Furthermore, we are seeing people being replaced in favor of automated processes/machines – banks use ATM’s for as many transactions as possible, do-it-yourself check out stations at the grocery store are beginning to outnumber the clerks, voice recordings answer the phone for utility services, and you can even choose an electronic machine over a movie theater attendant to dispense tickets. This is problematic because we are losing human contact and are therefore becoming starved to make connections wherever possible. This sense of desperation makes us vulnerable to all sorts of people and circumstances, something which we are already seeing and should be concerned with.