I was reading an article in The Observer of 1st November, about how technology has the propensity to reduce human contact. The basis of the piece was a new book by Granta’s editor, John Freeman. I suspect everyone who has worked in an office for more than 5 years has noticed how people now tend to email a colleague rather than pick up a phone or walk over and speak to him or her. Likewise, we all complain about too many emails. But, conversely, so many people love Facebook, YouTube, iPhones and Blackberries and the advantages they bring.
People in the UK spent over 500% more time on Facebook last year than in 2007. And apparently, the average office worker gets interrupted every 3 minutes. That’s a scary thought. Yet…
Thackeray wrote 15 letters every morning and I guess he spent the afternoon writing Vanity Fair rather than updating his Facebook profile, but it has to be said – that’s a lot of writing and not working.
Similarly, Henry James had more than 1000 correspondents. How long were his letters? He wrote plenty of novels, suggesting his average letter was in the region of, oh, 140 characters? Perhaps Stephen Fry is closer to Henry James than Oscar Wilde?
Although I’m in danger of harking back to my previous post and sounding like a Luddite, we do have to be aware of how social networking sites could potentially lead to an overload of information and, paradoxically, the trivialisation of news, facts and unique ideas which are all open to drowning amidst the mediocre. Just as we now surf tens or hundreds of digital TV channels only to end up watching BBC, ITV or Channel 4, how easy would it be to miss out on true quality or originality on the Internet when there are so many millions of sites?
To finish, an interesting aside. In a previous edition of The Observer, John Naughton suggested that teenagers cannot see the point of Twitter and, instead, it’s adults that form the bulk of its user population. I wonder if Twitter have published statistics on when the heaviest usage is. My guess? The working day.