That is about if the Internet really connects us more..... I will say this before I copy the article. I think in some ways it does. Yes it is true that often times you connect online with people you all ready know.... But look at like how ever flash mobs work... I assume that some of those people wind up meating each other and also connecting off of the web. Some shows in some cities (bigger then Buffalo I assume) have viewing parties for TV shows.... Then there are things like (e:drew) has had Viewing parties (not just for Church People either) and that great Champagne Brunch... Oh and bye the way thanks to you and (e:Janelle) they have been a great time and I'm sure a lot of work for you two.... I guess the point I'm making is it isn't the Internet it is how we use it... Yeah you can watch porn all day untill it hurts and you have no fluid left and you can order food and never go out side... But you can also find people on dating sites and chat on video and keep connections tight and find new people online. At the least you can keep up with people who you don't have time to see or call ....................................
I admit I'm hoping for some Comments>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Does Web really connect us?
Many use Internet to unite with others like them, experts sayBy Stephen T. Watson
News Staff Reporter
Published:
December 20, 2010, 8:00 AM
Updated: December 20, 2010, 11:06 PM
The Internet promises to let us connect with a stranger in Tokyo, but in reality we're much more likely to talk to a friend in Tonawanda.
It was viewed as a potentially globalizing tool. But if you look at how users really spend their time online, they interact with people who are a lot like them -- sharing the same ethnicity, hometown or class status.
"I think in part that's just natural human behavior," said Gregory R. Wood, Canisius College associate professor of marketing, who studies how businesses use social media. "Our online behavior tends to reflect, in part, our offline behavior."
Millions of conversations take place on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other websites every day, but most are segregated from the rest. Users talk near, but not with, others unlike them.
Local users say they notice the same pattern in their own online interactions, where they mainly chat with friends from school, or back home, about what's on their mind.
"Sometimes we talk about whatever the trending topic of the day is, or an event that happened," said Ricza Lopez, a media production major at Buffalo State College. "I like Twitter for the entertainment. A lot of people go on there and complain about their lives. It's funny."
Experts say this Internet isolation is a concern because, as the problems we face and the economy become more international in scale, we need to become more global in our outlook.
The way to resolve this issue is to translate more websites into other languages and to find the right guides to nudge us out of our online flocks, advocates say.
"These bridge figures, I'm pretty well convinced, are the future of how we try to make the world wider through using the Web," Ethan Zuckerman, a senior researcher at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society, said at a recent Technology Entertainment and Design, or TED, conference.
From the beginning, theorists argued that the Internet had the potential to revolutionize how we communicate by opening up people to new perspectives from across the globe.
But social media drive so much of the online conversation, and the people we talk to through Facebook, LinkedIn and other sites are usually people we've met in our offline lives.
On Twitter, where people send status updates in 140 characters or less, users start out by following people they know.
They expand their Twitter base by following people who write about topics that interest them, while Twitter suggests others to follow based on a user's location or current connections.
New technologies such as Twitter "amplify and extend who we are and our existing tendencies," said Steve Macho, an assistant professor of technology education at Buffalo State.
At noontime one Friday earlier this month, the most-repeated phrases worldwide on Twitter were "firstkiss," which encouraged users to describe their first lip-lock; "ifihadsuperpowers," a more whimsical topic; and "Xiaobo," a reference to Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that day.
If you dig down into those conversations, however, you'll see that the people engaging in them for the most part share a common denominator of race or geography or interest.
Zuckerman, in his lecture, said he was surprised to see how many African-Americans use Twitter, which recently did some research on its users.
The service believes 24 percent of American Twitter users are black, about twice their representation in the general population, Zuckerman said. White and black Twitter users aren't talking to each other, however.
Citing research performed by Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda Viegas, Zuckerman points out most popular topics on Twitter are exclusively posted by either white or black users. In May, for example, the term "cookout" was posted almost entirely by black users, while the term "oilspill" was almost uniformly white.
Mate Salekovics, a D'Youville College student from Hungary, said he goes online to call friends and family back home, check out news from Hungary and interact with others who study information technology.
He said he doesn't think there's much that would make him change his habits.
"I know many other things are going on online," Salekovics said. "I do what I like."
Digital segregation also occurs in online news.
Google Ad Planner found in June that 99.9 percent of Chinese users, 98 percent of Japanese users and 93.9 percent of American users get their online news from domestic sites.
"We occasionally stumble onto a page in Chinese, and we decide that we do, in fact, have the greatest technology ever built to connect us to the rest of the world, and we forget that most of the time we're checking Boston Red Sox scores," Zuckerman said in his lecture.
Beginning in 2008, researchers noticed a trend of users seeking out websites that have an explicit point of view, and one that reinforces their own views, Aaron W. Smith, a senior research specialist with the Pew Internet & American Life Project, told The Buffalo News.
Smith isn't convinced the Internet is totally to blame.
"Is this a symptom of the broader polarization we've seen in the political world?" he asked.
Others argue the Internet has changed how we consume news, making it more interactive, and the medium is filled with information that can challenge a belief system. Liberals can visit the Drudge Report, for example, and conservatives may stop by Huffington Post.
"The key point is, I have to want to do that. It is there," said Wood, the Canisius professor.
People employ different media -- TV, radio, print and online -- to get their news, and on the Internet they "forage broadly" and rely on friends to fill in what they missed, Smith said.
But these are people you already have something in common with, so they are sending you links to issues that you might already know about.
Jeffrey J. McConnell, a Canisius computer science professor, laments that we don't just stumble across things anymore because we're always directed exactly where to go.
The search engines powered by Google, Microsoft and other high-tech heavyweights don't encourage the kind of pleasant meandering that happens when we go to a library or look up a word in a dictionary.
Data showing the most popular search terms in a particular country or community shows how inwardly focused we are.
Buffalonians using Google over the 30 days ending Friday to look up news or current events most often searched for the terms "news," "buffalo news," "wgrz" and "wivb," with "channel 2" and "channel 4" also high on the list, according to Google's Insights for Search.
Is this insularity bad? "[The Internet] helps us to not feel isolated as individuals," McConnell said. "It can be bad because we don't get a chance to find out what's going on beyond our small world. It still is a very narrowly focused interaction."
Zuckerman suggests following well-placed, internationally oriented guides who can point Internet users to ideas and people and places they otherwise might never have found.
Lopez, the Buffalo State senior, is a music buff, and this is a popular topic among her friends on Twitter. "Not only do we talk about music that we are into, but also music from other regions that I am not from, such as Africa, Europe and the Caribbean," she said.
swatson@buffnews.comnull
@ (e:Paul) I do think that there are still sites where people have an interest and they talk about that or share things about with out meeting. Sometimes they may even talk about the interest instead of taking part in it (of course a lot of that all depends on the person)......
Now In Terms of the people you want to Join (e:strip) or the direction you want the site to go in (not sure what things they would be) there are things you could do to try and get more of that kind of site. The other thing is that if you wanted a site to go in the other direction come up with a Version 2 or and ALT version and try to get strangers or whom ever on that site. I don't know how do to it on the computer end but from a programing point of view it would look just like this one. Maybe when there is something new you want for that site or this site one site would be the testing ground.... Again I'm not saying to do that.... Maybe even link them like how here and lisa's site was is that still up I wonder?????
This one is tricky for me because I am actually not very social at all. For me the internet does not provide much social interaction but rather a place to document what is going on.
With that being said, I ironically made estrip to fight against the trend at the time in 2002, where people were clustered around hobbies in online sites at the detriment to their local community. At least that was how I perceived it. E.g. user a loves cabbage patch kids, user b loves cabbage patch kid they hang out on the cabbage patch kid site.
I also liked that total strangers could meet in a similar fashion to the way you run into strangers on the street.
Mostly though I was just interested in helping people document their life. In the end I totally failed to really push the boundaries on getting people to get their friends involved. I think it would have been cooler if there were just more random strangers and less people that knew each other before.
One Of the reasons I posted this is because I thought one of the ideas of (e:strip) was that there are many sites and many ways that the internet keeps us isolated and (e:paul) wanted the opposite of that, I site where you are more connected socially but Of course I don't want to speak for him.....
There are sites that I know of where all you do is discuss stuff and I've heard of flame wars, where people use tones and words they would never have the guts to say to the persons face.....
I contend that in some ways the net does make us less connected in way. Take a great flash mob Youtube video or something. Everyone loves it but everyone who watches does so by them selves it isn't like they call there buddy hey come over to my place and watch it with me on the net.
Now what it doesn't really get into is the question of? Is an internet conversation or even chat the same thing as speaking face to face.... I say it can be close but isn't really the same.... There are pauses and people can be do two things at once if there is a pause at a party then it is onto talk to someone else.....
I don't know Just something to think about.....
Whoa, I must be a total outlier if these people are anywhere near correct (which I doubt very much). Do I interact with people
-- "sharing the same ethnicity" NO
-- "hometown" NO
-- "class status" What is that? Not really.
Also, what kind of population did they sample? Looks like they are looking closely at the habits of
a) undergrads from local community colleges
b) local high schoolers who are shouting their OMGs in 140 characters
These two specific populations are bound to be "insular" by definition. You cannot possibly expect a general member of these two populations to be networked with friends of different ethnicities, nationalities etc. because they simply have not accumulated that many years of life to be considered well-connected to a wider variety of people.
Also, seeking out newer ways to connect happens only when there is some need compelling it. What need could UGs and high schoolers possibly have? May be school-based research, exchange programs? Wherever you see these instances or opportunities for network expansion, I bet you will see a departure from how they usually use the internet. The generalizations in the article are so sweeping as to be completely incorrect or to a large extent, off target.