The personal computer is seen in today’s society as a necessity, an object that is a help in the daily functions of life. To think that not too long ago, people had to do everything by hand; shopping, communicating with friends, papers, etc..., now the computer makes life more simple and more comfortable. The question I want to impose on today’s computer/ internet savvy society, “is the computer going to negatively impact the standard of the younger generation’s communication?” With the advances of the personal computer, along came the internet which is thriving with success. A new craze started to appear with the spread of the mass use of internet and PCs, it was the birth of Social Networking Sites.
These sites are defined from lecture as having 3 main components, 1. People must be able to construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, 2. Articulate a list of other users whom they share a connection and 3. view and traverse their list of connections and those make by others within a system. Facebook is an example by definition of a Social Networking Site (SNS). This system is a progression of a bulletin board system (BBS) which allows computer users to download/upload software, news, messages with other computers according to lecture. Facebook is the first to use a live “news feed” update, this shows up on the users home page, and keeps them easily up to date with their friends without having to navigate away from their home page.
The youngsters of today are infatuated with this type of micro-blogging, it is their main way of staying connected with friends also, according to our textbook SNSs account for 11% of all time on the internet. According to a journal titled, “Are Computers Transforming Humanity” by Mark K Pratt, there is a section that describes the changes in the generations that have grown up with SNSs. They found that SNSs and micro-blogging has had an impact “lowering the grammatical and writing skills of our up-and-coming professionals.” (Pratt, 2009) We are now so in-tuned to write casually, send daily emails, text, and instant message as our main point of contact, a phone is now seen as inappropriate or too much of a hassle. We now depend on the fastest way of communicating instead of taking the time to communicate face to face. If the standard of new professional skills is slacking due to lack of formality in our communication, what is going to be our way of communicating 10 years from now and will the level of professionalism be even worse?
Pratt, M.. (2009, May). Are Computers TRANSFORMING Humanity? Computerworld, 43(19), 20-21,24,26-27. Retrieved August 8, 2011, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1729101071). |
