Most Intriguing

The concept that intrigued me most from our readings this week was Norman Nie's quote about how "The internet could be the ultimate isolating technology that further reduces our participation in communities even more than television did before it." I agree with Amitai Etzioni's argument that claims that "the internet increases our social isolation are wholly unsupported."

Based on our conversations from last year and the first week of class, I would have to say that the internet actually increases participation in communities. Perhaps Nie thinks that the isolation stems from staying indoors and working on a computer in an individual aspect. Technically, the physical activitiy of using a computer is an individual activity - logging on, typing, clicking the mouse - is all individual activities. However, the opportunity to interact with people through the internet is infinite. Perhaps a person who is a loner and has a hard time interacting with people in real life can find a chat room that features only people who consider themselves loners as well. This would give them the chance to participate in community-based activities that they would otherwise not have in real life.

This concept contributes to our discussions from last week because it shows that people are responsible for the user potential of the internet. The websites exist, the chat rooms exist, and its up to the users to determine if they want to use them, how they want to use them, and how often they want to use them. If the users only want to play individual computer games on the internet, against the computer, they could be contributing to this isolation that Nie speaks of. But many websites promote interactions with other people - even ordering from places like Amazon.com allows users to provide feedback profiles of other users that are viewable by everyone. And its up to the user to either read or ignore these profiles. Nevertheless, these possibilities are infinite. Even if the user decides not to use the profiles or interactions, others around them do, which still affects the user in some way - maybe they see the profile and ignore it, but they still acknowledge that it exists and that the potential is there.