Is the technology connecting us more or isolating us more?

Depends on how it's used and the context. Technology has allowed me to connect with people far away or who have moved. It's connected me to vastly different cultures.

It can do either depedning how it is used.

It is not our natural behaviour to lock ourselves away from normal social contact as if in some digitial version of a Mediaeval hermetic order. We need meet and know other people in real-life - typically by any or all of education, work, social-clubs and pubs, hobby clubs.

Social media such as this site allows us to talk to people who are still strangers but whom we would never meet in reality, mainly by geographical distance. It should not replace our normal circles of relatives, colleagues, friends, though; and the wider the total of those circles the better.

On-line shopping may be convenient and for house-bound people really the only practical way they can buy necessities including food. Trawling round a supermarket - likely one that has wiped out the local independent shops - is a chore anyway, at least many shoppers would see it that way. Nevertheless the service is robbing its users of small but important pleasures like chance meetings with friends.


Even when in physcial gatherings, noticed how many people are terrified to switch their 'phones off, to concentrate on the real people around them rather than on a little box of electronics?

One of the most eerie experiences I have, which illustrates all this, came when I was the sole member in a club's accommodation, among a guest group of about a dozen young people. One on a lap-top on her own (work or study, probably), a couple sharing another (a film?); the rest intent on their 'phones. No-one dared say a word to anyone else, even look at each other, for some two hours. At that point I put down whatever I had found to read and sloped off to the pub, seeking real conversation with real people; not the Unholy Order of the Most Unilluminated Hermetic.

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That's social use. (social?)

I worry, as does the world of the arts, of the way Artificial Intelligence is being developed to end one of humanity's greatest assets: creativity.

We have had for years now, people making ephemeral pop music by "sampling" others' work, in doing so celebrating low talent and effort to become talented. AI now is a growing threat to even the talented by taking their work to create essentially large-scale samples, be they of music or literature. To do so too, with no acknowledgements to the real creators, let alone royalties.

The UK Government is presently debating this and other IT-related matters, and what has seriously worried musicians and writers is that it seems minded not to stand up to the AI companies demanding the right to offer writers, composers and perfomers to opt-out of their work being used. Not to allow them to opt-in, i.e. so the creator retains control, and the company needs his or her specific permission to use the work: a huge, vital difference. If the AI corporations are given the upper hand by being allowed to use opting-out, I think they would make that as difficult as possible; but either way might well ignore any laws and ethics that obstruct their greed anyway.

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Elsewhere, the Internet is being used to destroy proper service. Notice how disingenuous are the banks and other organisations are when they use "customers' changing habits" as an excuse to close branches, to limit methods of obtaining services and paying for them, to limit and obstruct information or help?

The customers are not changing their habits themselves. The companies are changing and limiting what is available to the customers.

A bit of both.

What's just occurred to me is what lies behind that very wooly, largely meaningless word technology, and its consequences for social connections.

The first connective "technology" other than what Nature provideth - like speech - could be said to be the inventions of writing, in various cultures and languages, in the last few millennia BCE.

That allowed messages to be carried, facilitated trade, brought books. All connecting people.

In Mediaeval times, William Caxton is credited with the first printing-press. Not so long later, Gutenberg advanced that by developing moveable type - greatly increasing the flexibility anfd efficiency of printing. True, most people were laregely illiterate evebn in their own languages, and most official and religious documents were in Latin, but it was still greatly increasing connections.

It also started the growth of what might be called public communications hence connections - of novels, poetry, drama, music.

The "technology" of music advanced - new and better instruments, more music printed. One very important result was the development of chamber and other small-scale works so people could gather to share music and dancing at amateur as well as professional level.


The 18C brought Science and its brother discpline, Engineering - not only eventually better printing presses but much faster physical communications, by better roads, the canals then the railways and steam-ships.

Late 19C: the Telegraph (Morse messages sent in a sort of binary form, as electrical short and long impulses).

Next, early 20C - voice telephony; and ever faster, more extensive physical transport pof goods and people. The railways had already started the popular tourist trade hitherto a preserve of those with the time and money to travel for weeks and months at a time.

Huge technical developments in printing books, newspapers and magazines.

Radio, first telegraphically by Morse then voice; and its visual extension, television - albeit like books, one-way. Major connective communications of information, education and entertainment.

The telephone - look at the very word! It says as it means, voice-communication between individuals at far distances.
We'd finally arrived at "technology" allowing immediate, two-way personal connections for anyone, at distance.

'

Then came the Internet.....

The computer in its various forms and its connection systems are all brilliant Engineering, but still as much "technology" for communicating and connecting people as the early writing and Caxton's press, even if vastly different physically.

Then came so-called "social media"....

Are they - the "media" - really as "social" as said?

Irrespective of how the engineering may develop, are social-media the zenith of communications and connections between people?

If we think so so, sometimes we ought remember the real meaning and implication of zenith....

I think both. Kind of irritates me when you have guests and they can't part with their phones.

Both. So it depends on the individual.

Definitely both, but sometimes I feel it is a bad thing.
It is great to communicate with anyone throughout the world at any time of the day. But that is also a bad thing because you can never get away from work!!

In the wake of the pandemic 😷
“The feeling that ‘no one is listening to me’ makes us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us”
🤷‍♂️

It does not depends what you let it do, but on what you let yourself do with it.

You have the ultimate control. It's called the "OFF" switch...

Both. I think the detrimental affects are more than the beneficial.

Isolating us because more and more jobs are being done by robots , more and more people are shopping online etc so less excuse to leave home , so were not mixing as we used to .It wont be long before schooling is done online as well and kids will have no reason to leave home , will never make friends etc .

I see this as a double edged thing. Yes it means I can part a team based in another part of the country and as someone else has said keep in touch much easier. But it will always be limited and there is nothing like actually meeting someone

Overall, it's definitely contributing to our being more isolated.
It's part of the agenda.

It does both at the same time...connecting us more strongly to a smaller, more "like me" group, which doesn't often mirror reality.

A little bit of both but it has made it easy to communicate with people on the other side of the planet. Which is a good thing.

Both? I mean … look at all the connections here? But notice how in person is distracted by phones and how many are stuck on zoom calls

Both. I am isolating people in real life but I feel connected with you all here.

I think it's more isolating than connecting.

5G ... is the beginning of the end there will only be smart things not smart peoples

I think a bit of both.

Isolating in my opinion

Both?

Both

These days? Isolating us more. Think of all the variants we would have if it wasn't!