Using Technology To Nail down What We Know and Don’t Know about Effects of High-Tech on People Today
Do all the new devices around the world that we now use to get information and communicate separate or bring us together?
That either-or question has been debated since the telegraph, telephone, radio, and television became common technologies. The question pinches again with the swift spread of smart phones, social media, and dependence on the Internet.
Sherry Turkle’s recent book title, Alone Together, says it all. High-tech devices offer the fantasy of connection and companionship without personal intimacy, she says. Thus, people feel even more lonely after they “friended” someone on Facebook or texted 25 times in 10 minutes someone they just met.
What is missing from Turkle’s argument is a baseline for comparison of now and then. Has there been a “golden age” where most people felt connected to family, friends, and community? We do not know from Turkle’s book because she does not compare explicitly the present moment to an earlier time. She does implicitly compare, of course, since that it is the basis of her argument.
COMPARING THEN AND NOW PEOPLE USE OF PUBLIC SPACE
Rutgers sociologist Keith Hampton recently tried to answer the question of