INFO 202 Fall 08 Blog

I came across this TechCrunch introduction to a Japanese online game called Webkare. The site is a mix of social networking and online dating with virtual boyfriends. (I didn’t get it either.) After signing up, members try to hook up with one of four male characters at their virtual high school. Members have to use the social networking feature and collaborate in order to advance in the game. 

My initial reaction toward the Japanese Webkare was critical. How will a virtual-boyfriend-social-networking-game affect the millions of Japanese girls? What need does it fulfill? How can teenagers and twenty-somethings feel connected to a virtual boyfriend? Will our increasing use of technologies that keep us connected lead to an increasing feeling of loneliness? Perhaps I was just reacting to what I think is a certain proclivity toward quick-fix internet solutions for human problems. (I am growing increasingly skeptical of their effectiveness.)

Sally Abrahms, a freelance writer in the Boston area, writes about what she calls “Loneliness 2.0″. She laments that the same technology that has been developed to bring us closer together seems to be isolating us. She writes on behalf of telecommuters who work from home and sometimes go without face-to-face human interaction for days. Loneliness, apparently, begins to set in after three days of no physical human contact. *wince*

While no one can deny the incredible power of the internet to organize, collect, analyze, and display information, maybe we overestimate its ability to change or override human nature (e.g. Cory Doctorow and the problems of a meta-utopia: “Metacrap”). Abrahms cites studies to show our need for face-to-face interaction in establishing meaningful relationships and successful working environments. 

Most new technologies are met with apprehension and fear: books will make us forget; calculators will make us lazy; Google will make us stupid. But if Cory Doctorow is right, the sword cuts both ways. Any technological solution must carefully and intelligently design around the quirks of human nature. Why? We cannot escape ourselves, even online. Societies change and we adapt. But what does not seem to change are our essential human qualities.