Cyberspace - nirvana or not?

[BarbTherese]

Full text of article is here: https://www.newsweek.com/clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306

(I think a better forum might have been debate?)

Final para of text: "What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who'd prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where—in the holy names of Education and Progress—important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued."

 

My comment:  For people that are disabled, ill and homebound, isolated, the internet can be the best available for some - a 21st century version of human contact - second in quality to the real thing, but human contact nonetheless if the real thing is denied them.  For such people, the internet is a blessing.

It is also a place where people who are on the same page can interact.  A group of people one might not be able to find in real life.

The internet used with care and understanding is a blessing.  What we all need is education in using it and for there to be more responsibility and accountability undertaken and applied with policing of any type of harmful sites. 

Like all the gifts of God (and the internet is His Gift) they can be abused.  I dont believe that the internet is out of control so much as it is permitted to run out of control.  Sensationalism sells and it sells on sites where sensationalist type reporting and 'advertising' is permitted to run wild.............all in the interest of power and the dollar.

Well, that is my two cents worth