Disappearance of the fTf interaction- Assignment #9

Prior to our entrance into the new millenium our society was heavily concerned with the possible breakdown of the internet and failure of computer systems. If we look into the past we can realize that even in the early 90s our lives were not nearly as dependent on technology. We have gone from a culture where we converse solely through face-to-face interaction and revert to paper mail and telephones as alternate forms of communication. Nowadays it has become our priority to use e-mail, instant-messaging, and telephones ( mostly for text-messaging purposes) to communicated with one another. I have talked with many people in the business industries who have told me that they have started using instant-messaging throughout the company to communicate with fellow employees. The reasoning behind this being that it could cut time and costs by outsourcing work across seas and allowing people to work from home. Time is cut when schedules don't have to be made to be in a certain place at a certain time for a meeting; with video technology and IMs companies are able to have virtual conferences. With outsourcing, companies can higher employees who accept lower wages and can work at times when the company is sleeping in America, therefore making the company a 24/7 operation.
The main idea that I think will become a strong representative of CMC environments and virtual interaction as we move on is that people will loose the ability to communicate affectively face to face and relationships will not be as strong for lack of cues (Cues Filtered Our Theory). Similarly, SIDE theory will continue to show face (no pun intended) in CMC environments as more people become reliant on these sources as their primary forms of communication thereby relying on the overattributions they form about those with whom they converse.
While it is clear that many theories will hold fast to the happenings in the future I believe that we need to look even more directly at the lack of ability that humans have to interact face to face. I think that the more people interact online the less they will in person. Factors we have discussed that will influence humans to act this way is the 24/7ness of CMC environments, the ability to self-present, the ease of being honest. When I mention ease of honesty it is interesting to discuss the pros and cons: Is being honest always good? Will this cause relationships to be weaker? People to be less polite? Could this possibly strengthen relationships because we are more straightforward online so we will express our feelings more readily? Additionally should we see the 24/7ness of online communities as a positive or negative? Is is negative because this enables people to avoid further human interaction and any other'real life' activities for that matter? or is it Postive because it allows people from all over the world to converse and thus broadens our scope of society? These are issues we must look at when we look at the future of technology and communication in CMC.
In COMM245 it would be extremely interested to discuss the issues I have mentioned above. I believe that we missed looking at more of the psychological aspects of what reliance on CMC for communication does to our everyday face-to-face relationships. Yes, we did discuss how they are different but not really how they affect one another ( at least not on a deep detailed enough level). It would be interesting to discuss whether or not society could function without human face-to-face interaction at all and what they would mean. It seems that part of Ramirez and Wang's points on the different outcomes when you meet fTf in the short term vs long term after using CMC hold true. It makes sense that the longer you get to know someone online the greater the development of your picture of them and the less room you leave for alterations of the mental picture. Adding to this we can see elements of SIP, the idea of time. SIP differs from CFO in that it says you can develop a clear idea of who the person is, it just takes time however we have yet to look at this in totality. Yes, overtime we gain more information about the individual but is this really the case. Has anyone ever wondered whether time just allows us more opportunity to develop our own perception of the person not really who the actual individual is? This might be an area that COMM245 could explore.