Questioning the role of computers, smartphones, touch-pads, etc., and their ever-expanding applications may seem not only prudish but futile. They have already changed society as few would have predicted even just a few years ago. We are probably seeing just the beginning of an utter transformation not only of the way we socialize, but of the nature of being itself.
That is, the definition of "humanity" will itself be altered fundamentally, as some are predicting that technology may someday be actually physically integrated into our bodies. It would be sentimental, then, to note that some social activities and forms of expression we have taken for granted will have completely vanished -- many are already all but gone -- as we ever more make convenience and immediacy the main standard for communication.
One might ask again the question that others have also posed, namely whether this unprecedented access to information, or at least a certain kind of information, isn't making everyone somehow less well informed. And whether the ability to communicate more or less ceaselessly, yet with remove, does not distort and even devalue that which connects people to one another.
But to my purpose in writing. The communications revolution will have completely done away with what is left of American bourgeois culture. There could well be no more forms, traditions, and ever fewer communal rituals in the mainstream of society . We will no longer be the embodiment of a heritage that is in the public domain, but will have as our main object the fulfillment of our private needs and the cultivation of our close personal sphere. Public space is expanding, in theory, while the private sphere grows ever smaller.
That is, the definition of "humanity" will itself be altered fundamentally, as some are predicting that technology may someday be actually physically integrated into our bodies. It would be sentimental, then, to note that some social activities and forms of expression we have taken for granted will have completely vanished -- many are already all but gone -- as we ever more make convenience and immediacy the main standard for communication.
One might ask again the question that others have also posed, namely whether this unprecedented access to information, or at least a certain kind of information, isn't making everyone somehow less well informed. And whether the ability to communicate more or less ceaselessly, yet with remove, does not distort and even devalue that which connects people to one another.
But to my purpose in writing. The communications revolution will have completely done away with what is left of American bourgeois culture. There could well be no more forms, traditions, and ever fewer communal rituals in the mainstream of society . We will no longer be the embodiment of a heritage that is in the public domain, but will have as our main object the fulfillment of our private needs and the cultivation of our close personal sphere. Public space is expanding, in theory, while the private sphere grows ever smaller.
