Howard Rheingold makes some striking comments on the effects and implications of being 'always connected':
When millions of people carry Internet connections in their pockets, the focus of communications shifts from places to individuals – with significant implications for the way we think of ourselves and the shape of our social institutions.
I'm glad that places like NetLab are using the tools of social science research to probe provocative questions raised by technology-mediated communications: How do virtual communities affect physical communities? What kinds of social institutions are created or destroyed by new modes of communication?
Picture a mundane aspect of everyday life that most readers will recognize: you're in touch with a coworker on the other side of the planet via email or IM, and at the same time you get an SMS telling you to bring home a carton of milk: "Glocalization" is what sociologist Barry Wellman and his colleagues at the University of Toronto's NetLab research community call this "local involvement and global reach" enabled by email and mobile phones. NetLab, a network of social scientists with links to the Centre for Urban and Community Studies, the Department of Sociology, the Knowledge Media Design Institute and the Faculty of Information Studies, applies the decades-old methods of social network analysis (among other tools) to the social behaviors enabled by Internet-mediated communication.
… In another study of "The Social Affordances of the Internet for Networked Individualism," Wellman, Quan-Haase, Boase, Chen, Hampton, Isla de Diaz and Miyata proposed that people are using five "social affordances" of networked, wireless, ubiquitous information and communication technology to change their lives and communities. Today:
We have broader bandwidth (which "facilitates the rapid exchange of large amounts of data, instant messaging, feedback, attached text, picture, voice, and telepresence.").
Are always connected ("This embeds the Internet heavily in everyday life, for as soon as a communication is thought about, it can be sent immediately and easily.").
Use media that are increasingly personalized ("with more control over the sources people want to get messages from, when, and about what. This form of communication and the ensuing interactions are more tailored to individual preferences and needs, furthering a more individualized way of interacting and a way of mobilizing as fluid networks of partial commitment.").
Take wireless portability for granted ("This facilitates personalized communication. The person becomes the target of communication. An individual and not a household is called. The person is the node to which communication is directed. Person-to-person communication is supplanting door-to-door and place-to-place communication. Personalization and portability are not the same. Personalization recognizes anywhere who people are. With portability, people take their devices with them. The combination facilitates the emphasis on individuals connecting and (mobilizing) to individuals, rather than individuals connecting to groups or groups connecting to groups.").
Are accustomed to global connectivity ("The digital divide – the socio-economic gap between those who use computer-mediated communication and those who do not – is shrinking in the Western world. This may mean an increase in the small world phenomenon, with potential connectivity over the Web to all, either directly or through short chains of indirect ties. … It also facilitates transnational connectivity, be they migrants staying in touch with their homeland or transnational networks mobilizing around issues").
Wellman et. al. conclude:
"Changes in the nature of computer-mediated communication both reflect and foster the development of networked individualism in networked societies. Internet and mobile phone connectivity is to persons and not to jacked-in telephones that ring in a fixed place for anyone in the room or house to pick up. The developing personalization, wireless portability and ubiquitous connectivity of the Internet all facilitate networked individualism as the basis of community. Because connections are to people and not to places, the technology affords shifting of work and community ties from linking people-in-places to linking people at any place. Computer-supported communication is everywhere, but it is situated nowhere. It is I-alone that is reachable wherever I am: at a home, hotel, office, highway or shopping center. The person has become the portal.
"This shift facilitates personal communities that supply the essentials of community separately to each individual: support, sociability, information, social identities and a sense of belonging. The person, rather than the household or group, is the primary unit of connectivity. Just as 24/7/365 Internet computing means the ready availability of people in specific places, the proliferation of mobile phones and wireless computing increasingly is coming to mean an even greater availability of people without regard to place. Supportive convoys travel ethereally with each person."
Like all good research, NetLab's findings raise further questions: What will it mean for minds and neighborhoods when "the person becomes the portal" and "supportive convoys travel ethereally with each person?" In some ways, these questions apply directly to the future of today's early adopter fifteen-year-olds around the world who spend their waking hours with with buddy lists, SMS, moblogs and cameraphones.
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