The article I read was “The Heart of the WELL” by Howard
Rheingold. This article portrays a
more personal side of the WELL through specific stories and shared experiences
of users.
The article opens with a discussion about the parenting
forum on the WELL. The author
states, “What amazed me wasn't just the speed with which we obtained precisely
the information we needed to know, right when we needed to know it.” I find this statement accurate for all
information available online. I
have the WebMD app on all of my Apple devices, and whenever I have a medical
question that is the first place I check.
It has also become so easy to ask a question on Facebook or another
online forum and receive an instantaneous reply. While this is convenient, we begin to rely too heavily on
technology and our access to others.
This leads into another aspect of the article;
addiction. People are starting to
become addicted to social networks.
There are 900 billion active Facebook users who spend 700 billion
minutes on the site a month. (More
stats can be found here). This astonishes
me! Why are we wasting our lives
on a computer “creeping” on other peoples’ lives? If we have become this dependent on Facebook since its launch
in 2004, I am anxious to see our dependence on new technologies in the upcoming
years.
If only we took that time and devoted it to something more important (probably our studies or spending time with people we care about). Thats 11.4 hours a month, and 136.8 hours a year. It makes me question having a facebook or twitter. I'd rather be spending that time elsewhere.
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