Losing touch in virtual communication

The standing argument is that the Internet has decreased interpersonal communication, or has it? With the wealth of technological growth that has enabled us to communicate with each other more than ever, surely this is not the case. From the invention of the telephone in the late 1800s, to the birth of the Internet in the 1980s, we can now interact with one another in so many ways it's phenomenal.

A man wise beyond his years pointed out that the Internet can be seen as a form of modern alienation on interpersonal communication, yet it is ironic that we have more channels to communicate through. It's quite the baffling paradox, really. I guess it comes down to what we define as interpersonal communication.

I think these days it pays not to get stuck on the ‘personal' part of interpersonal, like communication has to be between two people in a physical interaction of talking, laughing, hugging etc. The art of communicating comes down to a conveying of a message being sent from the sender to the receiver, and this can happen in so many shapes and forms. Yeah physical one-on-one communication can allow us to pick up on messages thanks to body language, underlying meanings and all that crap, but in my opinion this can be done just as easily on the internet.

It just happens in new forms; someone you've been having disagreements with avoids eye-contact with you on the street. Burn, they don't want to talk to you. Same person hops off MSN when you come on, same burn. I can hear people saying, "yeah but you can't prove that they went offline because of you". Well who says they actually saw you on the street, can you prove that? As far as misunderstanding in communication goes, it happens in the real world just as much as on the internet.

Dating and all that palaver; your mother always said there'll be more fish in the sea. Well look out, you've now got an abundance of possible spouses-to-be at the end of your fingertips rather than sifting through the tired dating pool that is Auckland. Sure, you hope that handsome Raoul isn't in fact Dave, a fat 40-year-old IT technician on the other end of your internet connection. But what really is the difference between finding that out compared to suddenly realising that the person you met at a party is actually an asshole? A bit of a rant perhaps, but I hope you catch my drift.

My point is the Internet doesn't have to alienate. It can bring people closer together. Thinking about it I actually know a few people that connected with someone on the Internet through the likes of MySpace or deviantART. Through surfing the web they found someone that shared a common interest for something, started communicating in cyberspace before making the connection in this so-called real world. It didn't make a difference in how they interacted with each other whatsoever, in fact if anything the internet was an ideal for them to self-disclose more so than usual, because they didn't have the pressure of that one-on-one situation that would usually freak them out. Think about the time you said something deeply personal through an email, chat, text or phone call that you wouldn't have had the balls to do face to face.

This is how much I hate this topic, I go off in these random tangents and I lose my train of thought. Okay, I'll bring up Facebook and so-last-year Bebo. Yeah I know, snore, yawn, whatever. Look at the friends you have on Facebook. How many of them would you realistically be in contact with had you not found each other on the Internet? We move away from our home towns, sometimes we end up on the other side of the world, our landline number changes... we lose our cell phones too easily. Out of all of this, your Facebook account is probably the one thing that won't bugger off any time soon, unless you forget your password, choose to stop using it or delete it. There are many friends from the past that I often wondered about, but damned if I could find them. Hop on the old Internet and shizam! look who it is. We're communicating more now than we ever did since we headed off to do our separate things in life.

Sure, this box of a PC in front of me isn't allowing me to communicate in a personal context, but why do I have the ability to communicate with several people, all in different places, at the same time?

The idea of modern alienation through the Internet is bit extreme. I think it applies to those that spend unhealthy amounts of time developing viruses, hacking into mainframes and clocking World of Warcraft. Ah stereotypes- got to love them. I just don't see how the Internet alienates any more than a letter or phone call would do.

We're simply in an evolving state of interpersonal communication. Do you think they had their knickers in a twist when Alexander Graham Bell busted out his phone? That was a new, convenient method of communicating without having to send the homing-pigeon or set up the horse and cart. People back then would have had to get used to it, just like we're adapting to the Internet now.

It's just the same as the recent development of Skype where you can have video conferencing. It's pretty awesome really; I can have a chat to my great-aunt in England with no more than a 3 second delay. And if some of you out there are convinced that you need the visual aspect to your communication, then this is precisely where the Internet proves it greatness. I can see my great-aunt rather than just hear her on the phone.

I'm a digital-native, and you probably are too. We have grown up with the Internet and computers and the mobile phone. As opposed to generations before us that are digital-immigrants, who had to adopt the new, fandangled, technological ways. This is it, this is our world, and this is how we can interact. The Internet is just another medium in which interpersonal communication occurs.