I agree that some privacy issues may turn out to be important but I don’t like your example. I think that there are three groups of people. Those who don’t use facebook or twitter to update their circle with trivial detail. Those who do for a short time till the novelty wears off. And those who do so and will continue to do so into the future. Neither the first or second groups have undergone any meaningful change, and the third group were the group who would have nattered with their friends about trivial detail even pre-internet, but will now just do so more efficiently.
Firstly I don’t think gracer is talking about him/her self.
Secondly I think you miss the point (perhaps as a consequence of your readiness to indulge yourself in scolding).
There have always been some people in society who can’t access information and consequently miss out on socio-economic benefit. However, my guess is that pre-internet there were three broad groups:
1/ those whose skills were too poor to obtain the information that they needed,
2/ those who had the skills to obtain information but probably didn’t because of lack of easy access, laziness, time poverty etc
3/ those who had the skills and used them.
Those same three groups probably exist but those in 1/ will have remained where they are, while many former members of 2/ will have become members of 3/, and the members of 3/ will have grown and advanced. End result? Group 1/ is or will become even more of an underclass than they would otherwise have been.
Duckster, please go back and read what I wrote before you say silly things.
My worry is exactly as Princhester explained. The gap is widening, and it was widely discussed as part of the PIPA debate.
I am at one of the UK’s top universities. Yet there are people here who can deal with facebook, but who panic if you want to make a presentation online. Or who aren’t as good as others at finding information, be it through google scholar or through other communities. They can’t deal with information online, they want a book. I’ve told many people how to use “command + f”, which is pretty basic when dealing with information. Working with paper is not the way forward, it’s not the way things will be happening in the future, but there are people who can’t deal with that.
Those people are literate, from socio-economically advantaged backgrounds, highly intelligent and educated. That’s the difference with pre-internet times.
I’m sure they’ve had a computer class in secondary school. But that’s exactly not the point. The times are changing so fast, it’s up to you to keep up. People who don’t fall behind drastically.
While its true people often live in little online bubbles, the bubble can be amazingly diverse. I remember the social groups on IRC it would be totally random, Australians and Israelis and whoever was online at the moment.
Thats something that is brand new in the realm of human experience, two people in a group I was in(that I know of) moved to another country to pursue a relationship. Thats normal and not odd at all to me, but baffling to the older crowd.
Its only going to increase.
I think that’s great if it ends up inspiring you to visit Austrailia or Israel or helps you start a relationship with someone. Otherwise you are just reading about other people doing it.
The way I look at it is the internet is a powerful tool for planning an awesome vacation. It shouldn’t take the place of actually going on one.