I share, therefore I am: how technology is making us more lonely

"Connected, but alone?" was a TED talk given by Sherry Turkle last February. It's an excellent look at the ways in which we are isolating ourselves in and through technology. We have a desire to connect more with people, but the ways in which we are connecting are actually making us more lonely. Check it out:



And here are some of her quotes:

"We're getting used to a new way of being alone together. People want to be with each other, but also elsewhere, connected to all the different places they want to be. People want to customize their lives."

"We can end up hiding from each other even as we are all connected to each other." 

"Human relationships are rich, and they're messy, and they're demanding, and we clean them up with technology. And when we do, one of the things that we do is that we sacrifice conversation for mere connection." 

"We use conversations with each other to learn how to have conversations with ourselves, so a flight from conversation can really matter because it can compromise our capacity for self-reflection." 

"People get so used to being short-changed out of real conversation, so used to getting by with less, that they become almost willing to dispense with people all together." 

"That feeling that no one is listening to me is very important in our relationships with technology. That's why it's so appealing to have a Facebook page or a Twitter feed: so many automatic listeners. And the feeling that no one is listening to me makes us want to spend time with machines that seem to care about us." 

"Technology appeals to us most, where we are most vulnerable. And we are vulnerable. We're lonely, but we're afraid of intimacy." 

"We are designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship." 

"I share, therefore I am." 

"You end up isolated if you don't cultivate the capacity for solitude. The ability to be separate, to gather yourself. Solitude is where you find yourself and where you can reach out to other people and form real attachments. When we don't have the capacity for solitude, we turn to other people in order to feel less anxious or in order to feel alive. When this happens, we're not able to appreciate who they are, it's as though we are using them as spare parts to support our fragile sense of self. We slip into thinking that always being connected is going to make us feel less alone. But we're at risk, because actually it's the opposite that's true. If we're not able to be alone, we're going to be more lonely."

The Bleak, Shallow, & Repititive Virtual Life

Latest post from Adbusters:

Now that the thrill of our hyper-connected existence is gone, virtual life has become a depressing daily grind. We toil late into the night, unleashing an endless stream of status updates and tweets in a desperate attempt to keep ourselves relevant, desirable and in. There’s an ominous irony in FarmVille, a Facebook application that enables users to build and maintain a virtual farm. It’s more than a game: It’s an allegory. Virtual existence is feudalism for the modern age. Those who hold the information are kings and those of us toiling in the virtual fields are the servile peasantry: selling our souls for the mind-numbing comfort of an online existence.

Social Networking Sites (SNSs) promise limitless, boundless friendship – a phenomenon that should make us happier than ever. But our optimism over connectivity has gradually morphed into cynicism and resentment. It turns out virtual life is less about connectivity than self-branding. SNSs entice us to divulge and update, stroking our fragile egos with filtered ads that utilize our personal information to reap huge profits, as our hundreds of “friends” perpetually rate our online popularity. Paranoid about how we’ll be perceived, we spend hour after hour trying to avoid the virtual consequences of being deemed uncool. We have more to worry about than our online acquaintances deleting us after we’re tagged in an unflattering photo. Sites like Lamebook, devoted to reposting cliché status updates and socially awkward wall exchanges, humiliate those virtual personas who are unfamiliar with the webs mores and codes.

Bleak, shallow and repetitive, virtual life seems increasingly less worth living. Users are beginning to realize that it’s not leisure, it’s work that borders on servitude. But there’s a resistance growing among those tired of their virtual subjugation. In response to the electronic world’s rising indignation, virtual suicide sites like seppukoo.com and suicidemachine.org have started a countermovement, provoking users to kill their online selves and reclaim their real lives. These programs assist our virtual deaths by hacking into our profiles, completely annihilating our online personas and leaving no trace of our former selves behind. It’s social revolt for the online age: a mass uprising that will shatter the virtual hierarchy and restore order to our actual lives.

10 interesting facts about Twitter

This article cited ten interesting facts about Twitter, reported by a social media analytics provider named Sysomos. Here are the abbreviated points:

1. 21% (One Fifth) of Twitter accounts are empty placeholders.
2. Nearly 94% of all Twitter accounts have less than 100 followers.
3. March and April of 2009 were the tipping point for Twitter.
4. 150 followers is the magic number.
5. A small minority creates most of the activity.
6. Half of all Twitter users are not "active."
7. Tuesday is the most active Twitter day.
8. APIs have been the key to Twitter's growth & utility.
9. English still dominates Twitter.
10. Twitter is being led by the social media geeks.

(HT:What's Best Next)

John Piper on Twitter

John Piper is now on Twitter. Rightly or wrongly, I now feel somewhat more justified by being on there myself. He wrote a great article at Desiring God explaining why he made this decision. His conclusion pretty much sums it up:

I’ve been tweeting anonymously for a month mainly to test its spiritual and family effects on me. In spite of all the dangers, it seems like a risk worth taking. “All things were created through Christ and for Christ” (Colossians 1:16). The world does not know it, but that is why Twitter exists and that’s why I Tweet.

Twittering in Church

There's been a few reactions to Time Magazine's article entitled Twittering in Church, with the Pastor's OK. The article explains how some churches in the US are encouraging their members to twitter during the worship service. By doing this, some pastors agree that it creates a healthy level of community as well as stimulate thought around a specific message that is being preached.

Will Mancini, author and church vision extraordinaire, weighs in here about how he agrees with the usefulness of Twitter in church as well. I know Will through my roommate Roy and between the two of them, they helped me see the usefulness of Twitter in general.

On the other side of response to this article, Josh Harris wrote a blog post of his own that includes six reasons why he would not encourage his people to twitter during the services. Here are those reasons, briefly stated:

1. Playing with my iPhone (or cell phone or Blackberry) during the sermon will likely distract me.

2. Even if I didn't look at anything else, the mere act of "tweeting" some quote or question or thought from the sermon would be several minutes in which I wasn't actively listening to the sermon.

3. The most important thing I can do while I'm sitting under the preaching of God's word is to listen to what God is saying to me. I need to actively engage my heart and mind to receive. Twitter, takes the focus off of hearing and receiving and and makes it broadcasting and sharing.

4. I think we all need to ask what our example says to other people we're worshiping alongside. Can a person look at me during the worship and see from the way I sit, listen and engage that the Bible is worthy of honor, that preaching is valuable?

5. Just because something is incredibly popular in culture doesn't mean we have to accommodate it in our worship...When the church gathers and the Word of God is opened, God himself is speaking again. Everybody else can shut up. Lost people in this world don't need to see that we're current with the latest trend, they need to hear God's unchanging truth. They need to understand that God's word makes a demand on their life.

6. You can tweet about the Sunday service after church.

John Piper also adds to the discussion here. His basic thoughts are:

"...when you are in corporate worship, Worship! There is a difference between communion with God and commenting on communion with God. "

Taking all these thoughts into consideration, I probably will be less likely to use Twitter during a worship service. I can easily see how it can be a distraction for myself as well as for others as I type on my phone during someone preaching God's Word. What do you think about all this?

Presenting the Gospel on Twitter

Greg Gilbert at 9 Marks posted a blog about being able to present the gospel Twitter style in 140 words or less. He asks readers to post their best efforts. Here's some of his thoughts:

"I realize some might have questions about the propriety of "tweeting" the good news of Jesus. Honestly, I don't. Rob Bell's statement 'You can't really tweet the gospel' notwithstanding, I actually think you can, and I also think it's not a bad thing to do so. For one thing, it's no bad thing to be able to articulate the core truths of the Gospel in a very concise form. Of course there's more to the gospel than can be confined to 140 characters; but that's not the point. If we were to say everything there is to say about Jesus and the good news, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written. But there are some simple, easily articulated, easily understood truths at the center of it---truths that can be expressed even in 140 characters."

(HT:Justin Taylor)

Is Twitter Worth the Time?

You might have seen (based on the right side bar of this blog) that I've joined Twitter. My roommate Roy was a big influence in that decision. I wrestled with doing it for a while because I already have this blog and wondered about the temptation to fuel narcissistic thought or to have one more way to be in a virtual community rather than an actual one. While I'm still trying to figure out how I want to use it, I do think I want to stick to it and use it redemptively.

I've interacted with a several people who question the benefit of Twitter and whether or not it will last. I ran across this article entitled "Twitter Quitters Just Don't Get It." Among other things, it states what Nielsen online research found that 60% of new users leave within the first month. Here's a couple paragraphs better explaining the uses of Twitter:

"In my opinion, the most commonly heard complaints about Twitter stem from a misunderstanding of it. Chief among these complaints is the utterly bunk assertion that it's just a whole bunch of people heralding the trivial events of their daily lives into the void. (i.e., "I'm going to the bathroom now!" or "Eating a yummy ham sandwich!") Frankly, if that's how you're using Twitter, you're doing it wrong, and you should stop without subjecting your friends to a full week of that rubbish, let alone a full month.

Another prevailing myth about Twitter is that it's just an expression of our collective narcissism, and that we're all just tweeting to hear ourselves tweet. In reality, though, the overwhelming majority of users follow far more people than follow them. And if you're tweeting more than you're reading, there's a good chance nobody's following you."

Longing to be Known

In the latest Relevant Magazine, there's an article entitled The Problem of Pride in the Age of Twitter written by Brett McCracken. In it he looks at the rise of technology and social sites that provide virtual community. Although his tone is rather bleak (I disagree that we are fundamentally boring), I think he has a good point regarding our desire to be known. Similar to my post yesterday, if we are not careful, we can allow our "status" and info on Twitter or Facebook (or blogs!) feed our narcissism.

Here's a couple paragraphs:

"We've become obsessed with 'status,' but not status in the sense of being objectively measurable (as in our class or social status), but status in the attention-deficit sense of 'what I am doing right now.' Communication is no longer about learning things from people or sharing experiences; it's about knowing what they're doing and how they're feeling--or at least how they want the world to perceive them as such.

Our lives have suddenly become much more dramatic, worthy of being 'performed' on a stage visible to millions. But since when are our lives so interesting that we feel compelled to share them with the world? Do we have delusions of grandeur? Perhaps it's not primarily the fact that we can tell our stories to the world, but that--more so than ever before--we desperately long to.

There is a real sense of emptiness in this generation. We've grown up in relative stability and lived borderline boring lives. For most of us, mo major wars, crises, famines or holocausts have plagued our lives. Meanwhile, we've consumed more media than ever--living in movies, television shows, video games and other fantasy worlds. There's been a dissonance between who we are (boring, unknown) and what the media has made us want to be (interesting, glamorous, famous). The result is a massive cultural longing to be known. Not by a few, but by many."