The Internet Is Not Social

http://adityamukherjee.com/journal/the-internet-is-not-social/

Aditya Mukherjee:

Sharing a website with a “+1″ isn’t social — sitting down with people and discussing it is. As one peels off layers of another person’s presence, that satisfaction reduces in intensity until there is nothing of the person and hence no satisfaction left. The Internet is at the bottom of the presence barrel. It’s as removed from human as removed and as artificial as artificial can get.

The internet that is deemed social is far from it but is so accepted because it’s a fair abstraction of what people want it to be. My attempts to take a step back haven’t been that effective. It’s funny how I used to initially think it’s social because I could connect with people who I feel separated from because of our physical distance from each other. That’s a nice excuse for what it has really become; I do myself and others good by using the internet as a tool instead of interacting in what seems like a mutual host-parasite relationship which we conveniently define in broad terms as being something like ‘social’ activity.