keflex

I’ve been reading “Bowling Alone” by Robert Putnam these past few weeks, and I’m almost through it. If you don’t know the book itself, the long and short of it is that since the 1960’s, American communities have been slowly but surely atrophying, and this has serious repercussions for various aspects of our lives (The book was written in 2000).

For those of you who find this concept interesting, I really would recommend sourcing a copy. The level of detail Putnam goes into is astounding (one graph charts agreement with the statement “TV is my primary source of entertainment” against instances where a driver gives another driver the finger in an average year), the citations endless, and the overall message is delivered effectively, even-handedly and optimistically.

Perhaps what makes Bowling Alone interesting in 2011 is that we’ve seen some of the most drastic shifts in how humans communicate with each other take place since the book’s publication (The original concept was first released as an article in 1995, and a full-fledged book in 2000). The rise of social networking services, and the ubiquity of the Internet & mobile phones (not to mention smartphones, which is beginning to occur) took place in the 00’s, and these three factors taken as a whole make a very valuable case for re-assessing the current society we live in against the same metrics.

What do you think these changes have done for generalised feelings of “connectedness” with the generalised other within society? I have my own theories but they remain just that, and certainly I have nothing resembling a body of evidence to back myself up with. But honestly, I would be amazed if we’d taken any steps in the right direction; not only do services such as Facebook allow us to further limit our interactions with people (the very nature of having to have someone as a “Friend” shows this), but by making access to our personal social networks so simple & so effortless, it makes it easier to keep up the appearance of being involved in the lives of others. Put it this way: one of the metrics Putnam uses is the amount of times people informally visit the homes of their friends, and the number has decreased in recent decades. Would social networking help to increase the number of instances of at-home visiting, or decrease it? Does a Wall post serve as an acceptable substitute for hours of shared company?