Blog Post 3: The Internet and Personal Space

I think it is wonderful that people from all over the world, given a common language, can come together and talk. Of course, there are geographical constraints, like time zones. But it is easy enough to find an insomniac in Asia to talk to or to be an insomniac who ends up talking to someone just waking up in England. So, to me, language barriers plus the inequality in socioeconomic classes (who owns a computer; who doesn't?) end up being a greater obstacle than physical space.

Of course, sometimes, there's a dark side to this ease of access: Is this person really who they claim to be? This can lead to many problems.
In that vein, it's really interesting for me to see how people have shifted from being anonymous at all times to swapping Facebook pages tied to their real names. In the past, the Internet was the scary place where a pedophile, known only by his AIM screen name, would try to hit on your 10 year old daughter. You never gave out your real name - at most, you would only give out your first name, but people usually went by aliases. Today, the Internet is a place where respectable businessmen engage in social networking using their full names. People post their cell phone numbers online, which was once unthinkable and very taboo.

I do, however, feel that some newcomers forget that the Internet is a public space. For example, on Facebook, one of my friends asked me a question about substance use using the new Questions feature. This was inappropriate because any number of my Facebook contacts could have seen the exchange occurring. This also happens when people do things like post pictures of themselves doing keg stands online. When posting things on the Internet, I try to remember that everybody in the world could potentially see it.

Also, personally, the Internet has been great for connecting with other Deaf people. The Deaf community used to be a lot more tied to geography. I knew zero people who were Deaf when I was growing up; I still don't know a lot. Today, however, I can join Youtube and vlog in ASL to communicate with other ASL speakers. There are even Deaf messageboards that are based entirely upon video: A person posts something, then a person films a video response using a webcam, and so forth. This is just amazing and makes me feel as if we are moving out of a dark age of communication and into a new era of interacting with each other.

-DJ Crosby