Douthat X-Rays The Man With the Google Glasses: Is Human Interaction and Communication Improving or Suffering in the Digital Era?

Ross Douthat at the New York Times has an article definitely worth a read in The Man With the Google Glasses.

The human "isolation" that the digital world can produce is unquestioned, but we wonder if Douthat is giving us "a fair and balanced" picture of what is actually happening out there in the real world.

For example, I just received an email this morning from someone who I had not seen or contacted since high school and who found me through Facebook.

In pre-digital days, such a refreshment of old school ties decades later was next to impossible. People moved away and disappeared into the mass of planetary humanity, with little chance of locating such lost contacts later.

In the digital era, finding old friends and classmates is much easier and is not an "isolated" incident by any means. Quite the contrary, in my family alone, I am guessing that dozens of contacts have been re-established in recent years with lost friends, relatives and acquaintances -- all through the Internet. Marvelous.

One must thus ask if Douthat's article might reflect one of the primary ailments of arch conservatism, which is an understandable but nevertheless skewed romantic nostalgia for the past that does not bear up to critical scrutiny.

Just how good were "human contacts" in the days before the digital era? and are they really "worse" today, as Douthat suggests?

As written at by Zoe O’Donoghue in “Friend Me”: The Impacts of Technology on Human Interaction, Running Head: Technology and Human Interaction,

"Certainly, the ways humans are interacting with each other are changing, and this is changing us.... Natalie Pennington maintains that while social networking sites like Facebook are drastically changing the way we interact, this change is not necessarily a bad thing.... She asserts, "You can learn a lot more about a person from their Facebook profile than the questionnaire they filled out to get a dorm room" (Pennington, 2008 ["Will You Be My Friend: Facebook as a Model for the Evolution of the Social Penetration Theory" Paper presented at the annual meeting of the NCA 94th Annual Convention, TBA, San Diego, CA, Nov 20, 2008.])." [Link added by LawPundit]

When this writer looks back, for example, on high school and college days, just how well THEN did we KNOW the people that we were interacting and communicating with? The answer in many cases is, not very well! We may have interacted together, but that interaction was often superficial. Modern digital communication may be no better in that regard, but likely no worse, and perhaps even better, when all is said and done.

At LawPundit, we previously quoted the famed novelist Thomas Wolfe on human isolation and loneliness:

"The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence".

Personal contact and digital communication serve as opportunities to come out of ourselves and to interact with the world around us.

The rest is up to us.

For this writer, the digital world has INCREASED our social community positively and substantially.

Although we do not doubt that others can have experienced this new world negatively, we are optimistic -- on balance -- that modern means of digital communication, as supplements to the tried and true alternatives of personal contact, are potentially welcome and useful additions to human life.

Indeed, we would suggest that is WHY they are so popular.


Hat tip to CaryGEE.

Crossposted from LawPundit.

Staying Off Google's Naughty SEO Blacklist

Angela West has the story at Computerworld UK in How to stay off of Google naughty SEO blacklist

Google Most Popular Company, According to Survey

Kate Freeman at Mashable

reports on a survey saying that

Google Tops List Of Most Popular Companies

New Privacy Policy of Google May Run into Legal Snags in Europe and the USA

What this new Google privacy policy may mean in practice is that ALL your searches will become part of a single portfolio of information about YOU and be connected to all your Google accounts and services.  Hmmm.

Now THAT could be a very serious problem of "Big Brother" really watching us.

**********

For the USA, Matt McGee has the story at Google’s New Privacy Policy May Violate HIPAA, Congresswoman Says


For Europe, Ian Paul at PCWorld has the story in Will Europe Upend Google's New Privacy Plan?

As Paul writes:

"Google's new privacy policy brings together more than 60 privacy policies from various Google products into one document. The new policy enables Google to consolidate your personal information strewn about various Google services so that Google can treat you as a single user across all of its products. Google currently has more than 70 individual privacy policies covering all of its services."

We use Google a lot as our main search engine, as one of our chief email providers and also via our Blogger blogs, so that we see the eminent sense for Google of consolidating all serendipity things that one person does via Google into one consolidated account. Indeed, when we accessed Blogger today, we were alerted by a notice to the upcoming change in privacy policy. However, we see searches, email and blogging as three separate services.

Is simple notification of the new privacy policy sufficient to enable it?
Can one legally justify this kind of private data consolidation?
Indeed, is it enough to permit users to opt out of logging in to escape it?

What about the interests of the users? Should they not be able to decide on an application basis what information they want to share and with whom or not? We have no doubt, for example, that Facebook will be facing an uphill legal battle in the future because of its pervasive consolidation of user information. It is rather remarkable that Facebook has gotten as far as it has.

It is a classic clash of the interests of online providers of services vs. the individual privacy interests of its users, interests that the law must protect.

There is a limit beyond which privacy invasion is so pervasive that the government will have to step in and so, "this far, and no further". Clearly, we are reaching that limit.

Frankly, we think Google is going to have to backtrack on this decision in order to avoid massive user discontent.

Berkeley California Picks Google Apps for Education Over Microsoft Office 365 and Gives Detailed List of Comparison

At Wired.com, Caleb Garling links to a detailed comparison showing why California Berkeley chose Google Apps for Education (including GMail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Video for Education) over Microsoft 365.

See
Berkeley Explains Why Google Trumps Microsoft

Mark Twain Birthday Celebrated by Google Doodle Today

MARK TWAIN GOOGLE DOODLE: Panoramic 'Tom Sawyer' logo colorfully celebrates legendary Clemens - Comic Riffs - The Washington Post: - Sent using Google Toolbar

Chromebook Store at PC World in Tottenham Court: Google Opens First Retail Shop in London

Surprise, surprise, but studies show that 80% of laptop sales are still made in physical shops and stores, not online, so Google is going retail with Chromebook. Jonathan Prynn has the story at Google's first store pops up in LondonNews.

Google slips to lowest search share in two years - Computerworld

Google slips to lowest search share in two years - Computerworld: - Sent using Google Toolbar

Google, Intel team up on future Android phones, tablets - latimes.com

Google, Intel team up on future Android phones, tablets - latimes.com: - Sent using Google Toolbar

Google Gets FTC Subpoenas in Antitrust Investigation

DailyTech - Google Gets Served With FTC Subpoenas in Android Abuse Investigation: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

AdWords? 20 Most Expensive Google Keyword AdWords via WordStream and TechCrunch

Robin Wauters at TechCrunch writes about a WordStream study of What Are The 20 Most Expensive Keyword Categories In Google AdWords?

Google Denies That Google Circles Launch is Imminent

Liz Gannes at Network Effect writes that Google Denies Social Network Called Circles Will Debut Today despite the report at ReadWriteWeb.

Social Network Google Circles May Be Launched Soon to Compete with Facebook

At ReadWriteWeb, Marshall Kirkpatrick writes that Google to Launch Major New Social Network Called Circles, Possibly Today, a service which is to permit social networking while respecting the rights of privacy better than is done at Facebook.

We would definitely welcome such a service, as the privacy settings for Facebook are not set up in such a manner as to permit privacy to be adequately protected while still engaging in social networking.

Whether a competitor to Facebook can counter the massive head-start that Facebook already has globally on social networking membership is another matter.

Google enterprise chief: Data is safer on our cloud than your PC - Fortune Tech

Google enterprise chief: Data is safer on our cloud than your PC - Fortune Tech: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

LawPundit: Google and Microsoft Battle Patent Troll GeoTag

LawPundit: Google and Microsoft Battle Patent Troll GeoTag: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"