Sharing the Addiction

I had an interesting letter turn up in the mail about a month ago. It was from my husband’s step-brother’s wife (yes that is a mouthful) who is living in London asking if I would consider writing a 200 – 800 word piece around the topic of something that has great importance in my life. She plans to put together a book after getting responses from a wide range of woman. Being the computer geek that I am, I ended up taking a technological view when I came to try and write something for her so thought I would share it here.

For me, one of the most important aspects of my life is the ability to connect with other people.  While some argue that society has become more splintered with families and individuals being increasingly more isolated, I would counter that by focusing on the way that technology has begun to bridge the gaps between people.

I lead two lives; one involves interacting with friends and my husband at home or at social events and the other involves my online life with all the friends and acquaintances I have developed in this space. While nothing will ever replace face to face contact with people that I enjoy spending time with, my online life is almost as important to me.  The friends that I have developed through tools like Twitter and through being part of a blogging network may be virtual but I talk to them regularly and have found like-minded people that I can both learn from and share ideas with.

Facebook keeps me in touch with a number of friends now living in many places around the world and has helped me to reconnect to people I have not seen in many years. I could do without all the application invites but that is a small price to pay for having a network that allows me to stay in touch with so many people at once.

So I guess what I am trying to say is that all of us have a powerful desire to connect with people – it is the essence of what makes us human. As technology changes, people are finding new ways to adapt this technology to meet this basic human need.  The most important aspect of this for me is that some of the biggest shifts in technology we have seen in recent years have not been driven by advancing technology for its own sake; they have been driven by this desire for people to reach out to each other.  I find that reassuring and believe that this growth in networking ability may prove to be one of the defining positive forces for change in our increasingly global society.

The funny thing is that I had just published this blog post when I ended up following a link while on Twitter that lead me to a blog post containing this graphic that symbolises connectedness online. Couldn’t illustrate my point more clearly I think!

So – what angle would you take if given this topic. Would you focus on friends? family? that lovely new piece of technology you got for Xmas? Why not let me know in the comments.

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