Killer of habits

Is e-culture social or anti-social?

Does E-culture isolate people and create bad habits or bring them together and generate pro-social trends?

This question is really a hard one. At first side, I would say it is a good social experience. E-culture connects people, building communities (forums, chats) around personal or professional interests. It offers you the opportunity to meet new people. Max had an interesting experience told on his post “Paris is blogging”. Just read it and you will understand that E-culture is not at all disconnected of the real world. It is quite the contrary. In the same way, it offers you new opportunities to find a job, like the webside Altaïde does (thanks again dear Max!).
More important perhaps, Internet reinforces links between people and gives them a new power: public interests groups become more and more powerful: Internet gives the way to people to express easily their point of view because of the principle of transparency.
Internet gives you the opportunity to save time, doing boring tasks in a short time (to fill the refrigerator, to pay the taxes, to pay the invoices, to check your bank account…). So you have more time to do interesting thing and to meet your friends! That is the benefits!

But on second thought, you can really wonder if Internet is not isolating people behind their computer. You can surf on the web without meeting anyone if you just collect information, buy things and download files. I know someone who is so frightened by the real world that he just live in the virtual world, being a virtual heroes in a virtual game. He has such a bad face and is so disconnected to the real world that he quite doesn’t go out of home!
But in fact, I think he has just psychological problems. If Internet did not exist, he would find another way to isolate himself…

So definitively, E-culture is pro-social, with the only but essential restriction that digital fracture really exists. Some people are out of the Internet system because they don’t have access to this technology. E-culture is not for all the inhabitants of the planet and we really have to make progress.

posted by killiane @ 2:02 AM