Stoll offered a different perspective about the internet community that I believe is rarely taken into consideration. While most of us praise the internet for all of its capabilities and take pride in our Facebook and Myspace addictions, there is something missing in our internet communities. Stoll believes that it is “a feeling of permanence and belonging, a sense of location, [and] a warmth from the local history” that makes internet communities less “real” than our face to face ones. Other authors agree that real world interactions are being lost.
While I can admit that it is an amazing thing to be connected with anyone around the world at anytime, the internet can be a very cold place. The internet is replacing real life experiences with electronically mediated ones. No longer does a child select and care for a new pet, they just create their own online on a site called Webkins. The internet pet must be fed and exercised, but it can be left alone for hours, taking away from the real experience of raising a pet, a great tool for building childhood responsibility. Children are really losing out on a sense of personal responsibility and accountability because of the internet. If they did spend more time in the real world, than the virtual world, they would have more hands on experiences to teach them.
Not that children are the only ones who are suffering from living in virtual worlds. I myself will find that I will not speak a word to another human being for hours, but spend an entire night talking online. The internet takes away from that sense of camaraderie you might build having a late night chat with a girlfriend. Now, conversations can be simultaneously had with multiple people and the people you are IMing are none the wiser about who else you are talking to. A deep meaningful conversation can not have the same function and success online as it does in person. In person you have someone’s undivided attention and you are actually using real words, not abbreviated IM language.
The internet has become more common than speaking out loud for some people (myself included). My roommate and I, who at no point in our apartment can be more than 30 feet apart, talk online frequently. We will be in the next room and instead of getting up and walking to each other we will talk for hours online. One of the strangest sensations I have noticed is that when we will be having a conversation online, and then one of us will get up to go to the kitchen, one of us will pass the other person, and not say one word. Then when whoever was walking around sits back down at their computer the conversation will be picked up right where it started. We never even discuss how strange this is because it has become totally common place for us. We even have very strange mixed conversations of yelling out loud to one another and typing online. If I yell to my roommate and she can not understand me, she will type "What did you just yell to me?" and we will continue our mixture of vocal dialogue and IMing. (Luckily, my roommate and I are not the only ones.) A common occurrence is asking the other one what we should have for dinner, once decided on AIM, we silently meet in the kitchen and begin cooking without a word passing between us.
Although my roommate and I have been able to maintain a healthy friendship, the next generation will have an even harder time separating their online community from their real one. I think this will greatly impact their personalities and interpersonal skills.
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