Questões de Inglês

The postings below were taken from an online forum on social isolation and digital technology, according to the american life studies.

Participant

 Bob

Livingstone

Posting

Is the quality of the technological communication as rich or fulfilling as face to face discussion? Is there any discussion about the differences between the two? So, we’re left with the facts that social isolation has increased greatly in the last 20 years and that a huge drop in neighbor relations is perhaps the leading reason for this trend. In addition, people spend a great deal more time consuming digital technology than they did decades ago. We can let the researchers quibble over whether technology has caused the social isolation problem.

Participant

Michael

Wood-Lewis

Posting

Personally, I see current digital technologies as contributing to the death of our neighborhoods. Our children are growing up in neighborhoods that are far less socially active than they were decades ago. Neighbor relations are absolutely crucial for children, I would argue, because only in their neighborhoods might parents be willing to afford their children some measure of autonomy. If we agree that we should place special value on neighborhood relations, as opposed to social relations in general, the results from all these studies are quite troubling.

Participant

Po Bronson

Posting

Lots of my friends have social media networks or listservs for their immediate neighborhood. (I wish I did, will work on it.) Wouldn’t it help for social network technology to unite families in neighborhoods, to bring them together? Can you recommend sites that help to get a neighborhood talking again?

playborhood.com

Teens, tech and tides of history: new gadgets can be hard to swallow 

Humans seem to take very well to inventions that simply make everyday life easier and more convenient

– the light bulb, the flush toilet and sliced bread, for instance. However, inventions that alter the way

we communicate and entertain ourselves seem harder for our species to swallow gracefully.

“Radio is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the

[5]  same time, and yet remain lonesome” - T.S. Eliot*, a student of alienation, declared in the early days

of the wireless. This impulse that new is worse, when combined with the eternal concern about “kids

today”, goes far in explaining why grown-ups worry so much about the weird things kids today do with

technological gadgets and gizmos.

As Eliot imagined that listening to songs and gags at home instead of in theaters, pubs and parks

[10]  would be a sad, isolating escapade, I can’t see how a virtual community can be a real community;

how chatting with someone online is like hanging out with a neighbor, or how “IMing” is meaningful

communication. I can’t believe that reality television, video games or the search for the coolest ring

tone are proper substitutes for, well, anything.

In today’s society, teens are inundated with gadgets. Most teenagers would probably admit their days

[15]  are filled with text messaging friends, talking on their cell phones, playing electronic games, listening

to MP3 players, blogging on MySpace, watching television, surfing the Internet or doing any number of

other activities involving media technology. Unfortunately, most of these electronic activities increase

teens’ individualistic behavior by lessening their opportunity to have face-to-face relationship building

time.

[20]  Some parents feel they cannot limit their child’s use of electronic gadgets for many reasons. Perhaps

the electronic device is being used to keep track of a teen’s whereabouts, the item was a gift, the teen

bought the gadget himself or parents say they feel hypocritical because they are modeling the very

behavior they’re asking their kids to stop doing. Still, these technological concerns should not hinder

a parent from helping their child socialize and participate in outdoor activities when it comes to media

[25]  madness.

I have a large measure of confidence that future archeologists and historians will conclude that

innovations such as a code-speak called “Instant Messaging”, or a music box called “iPod” or a makebelieve

room called “MySpace” inexorably set us on a path of alienation and individualism. 

DICK MEYER www.cbsnews.com