Tutorial 3 Blogging Task

In today's day and age new communication technologies are readily being utilized in order to keep in touch with family and friends. Gone are the days of snail mail, (refer to Stephen Stockwell's Lec. 2 survey) which showed that approx. 50% of us have never even posted a letter (which is a fact i find kind of sad- if half of us have never sent a letter, less people must be recieving those charming hand-written letters of the kind that put a smile on your face, just cause you know that someone actually went to some sort of effort- and lets face it, the clinical form of a rushed and hurriedly typed email, with a blank background and monotonous looking text -even with little smiley face symbols, just doesn't stack up in comparison.)

Here's a thought, have penpals died out with the use of email? I remember when i was little, my best friend lived right next door but we'd still post each other letters just for the fun of finding something in the mailbox. The majority of snail mail that we do recieve now is official communication. So it would be fair enough to say that we don't tend to use it for social communication purposes anymore. The ease and efficiency of new communication technologies such as email and myspace are winning out. Yes, that same old friend and i are now listed on each others myspace instead, and the only social communication i tend to recieve by way of snail mail is from my grandma who refuses to use a computer. Think about it, these days we virtually have an email address for everyone we know and we would be admittedly lost without our mobile phones- and the almightly text msg. Our address books are hidden within our computers and phones. If they crashed for good, how many of us would actually have written records? Or for that matter, have actually memorised the phone numbers of our closest friends and family. Just how many people would you lose contact with? So, are we too reliant on technology? We look at new communication technologies and see the ease and efficiency with which they help us to conduct our lives. But has it come at a cost? Have we lost that personal touch?

The use of these new communication methods has risen with the availability of technology (eg. computers) within our society. Today, most households own a computer and have
access to resouces such as the internet. Most people have email addresses and use them on a daily basis. Slightly less people have My Space and Facebook accounts, but they are quickly becoming addictive as their popularity rises. Until recently I'd never even heard of Facebook and only just bothered to sign up to My Space because i was graduating and friends and i were splitting to all sides of the country and overseas- and it seemed like a cheaper alternate to keeping in touch than constant phone calls. Speed is also a major advantage to these new communication technologies, allowing fast communication on a global scale. A person in Australia can easily communicate with someone in another part of the world, with virtually just a click of a button. The speed of email/ myspace etc.. eliminates what would otherwise be a long period of waiting time via snail mail.

Privacy issues are fast becoming a downfall to communication via the cyberworld though. Identity issues are hotly debated topics at the moment. Is who your talking to over the net, really who they say they are? Are your personal details safe? Is the fact that people do post untruthful information, or on the opposite side of things too much information about themselves, a problem? I personally know everybody I list as a friend on myspace. I quickly learnt with a spade of random friend requests, to set my profile and pictures to private and friends only....the possibility of my own personal stalker didn't appeal. But whether other people do take these precautionary measures does depend on their purpose for using myspace etc, are they there to meet new 'internet' friends or are they only using it, like me, to keep in touch? People who have open accounts should be aware of what they post up and remember that anyone can view it, including the employer who might just cancel your interview, after having looked you up and quickly deciding that the "drunk and high" comment or picture you posted doesn't necessarily reflect the type of employee they're looking for. If you take pride in your image in the real world, why not in cyberspace? I've rambled on for long enough now. Im inspired to go post a snail mail hand-written letter- it'll make grandmas day....sometime next week.