♥ Nothing Better Than Reading!! ♥ discussion

Opinions?

The words in their literal sense are obviously not good. From my experience in college, as long as it's in good fun, there shouldn't be a problem. I've been on both sides of "personal interactions" between seniors/juniors and they help to break the ice. It's a lot of fun and you meet interesting people. As long as you can figure out when a person isn't comfortable, it should be fine. At the end of the day, you learn from your seniors and they would only want the best for you.

Yes. We clearly dwell in a 'culture of disrespect' (and have been for a while now) thanks to a whole variety of media and 'media-messages'..oh, as far back as say, the big days of WWF wrestling on cable TV. Wrestling..just one example; but an apt one. Sham spectacle deliberately devoid of any kind of sportsmanship; where the goal of the participants (and their fanbases) is to hurl spittle at each other. The atmosphere of this 'sport' of hate carried over into more juvenile phenomenon like 'first-person shooter' video games. If you think all this leads nowhere, just listen to what campus gunmen describe as their hobbies and pastimes.

The internet particularly, introduced a wide variety of formats which instill 'faceless' and 'anonymous' pseudo-communication between people. It is an a-synchronous environment which breeds disrespect, objectification, and insensitivity. 'Chatrooms' and forums; texts; feeds; blogs; status updates; tweets; reviews; jpgs...all of these implement remoteness, distance, filtering, and barriers between individuals. People have become mere effigies and symbols. It has indeed led to an increase not only in bullying but in harassment, lawsuits, slander/libel; stalking. Living, breathing, individuals have been converted into 'objects' and 'toys' for our fingertips.

In addition to this, we now have the current explosion in scandals, expose, gossip-mongering, and celeb-watching which has turned journalism into a farce. [That's right, we can't even trust our news reporting anymore; and we certainly haven't been able to trust anything our government says..so who exactly do we trust, information-wise, these days?]

Face-to-face communication (the most vital form of any human communication) has been marginalized in today's world to a heretofore unimaginable degree. Why did anyone ever think that all this gee-whiz technology brought people 'enhanced' or 'increased communication'? Its exactly the opposite.

@Feliks....Agree with u on a few points....Yes, internet has degraded communication between people and this is working to our disadvantage because of the various crimes/cyber bullying/stalking etc. people do via internet nowadays...I mean, internet has given the people another medium to go on with these crimes which weren;t that intense in earlier times. But I feel internet communication is not all bad. People do have advantages due to internet communication but it's just that some people use it in a wrong way...and even though face-to-face communication is the most important type of communication, internet communication is a good alternative for that, unless and until people use it in the negative way.

Internet communication also helps people of different nationalities to interact with each other.

A superficial level of interaction, is how I'd characterize it. Gossipy-levels of interaction. 'Chit-chat'. Talking merely about product reviews, popculture, purchases, consumerism. The only thing that carries over from one modern culture to another (via a digital medium) is really this form of bland globalism. Mono-culture. The 'culture' of the internet. Its just not enough to offset the devastating effects of what I described above. WWW is an isolating technology: everyone 'head down' each peering into their own tiny little screen. Separate. Un-invested with one another. No shared cause. Everyone a 'spectator' at life instead of a 'participant'. Compartmentalization. Browsing and skimming right past everything for the sake of eliminating their boredom. Multi-tasking; paying half-attention to their relationships. Turning human beings into entertainment for one another; to be clicked on-or-off. Its absolutely the worst invention ever. If I could have strangled Steve Jobs as a baby I would gladly have done so.

Well, he's dead. Can you think of any good thing that comes from the internet? Any benefit it might offer to society?

@Feliks.. Those are some strong words. In my opinion, Internet has to be the best invention in the last thirty years. It provides me with access to all the information I need and has definitely made me a more knowledgeable person. It has made research easier and has driven the innovations of the last two decades. It has helped me keep in touch with friends overseas, people who I genuinely care about. It gives me a platform to talk to others, like you, and have this discussion :).Security and Privacy online are major issues but nothing is perfect. To brand internet as the worst invention ever is just being paranoid and resorting to plain hyperbole

P.S: Steve Jobs had nothing to do with the creation of internet.

P.P.S: I think we completely deviated from the debate topic.

Fong wrote: Can you think of any good thing that comes from the internet? Any benefit it might offer to society?"

I'd have to think about it. Get back to you sometime. Off the top of my head, I'd say that even if I could come up with a handful of positives...there are so many downsides (not just niggling or peevish concerns, but *major calamities*) resulting from this evolution that it doesn't even afford a good comparison.

I mean, if all I could find to criticize about it were a bunch of minor, petty, gripes..then yes, I'd be a lot more temperate in my views. Really, I never used to come out so vehemently against the 'net, until the advent of e-books. That was a shocker; and the scales finally fell from my eyes. Suddenly I woke up to just how crazy all this is. Tampering with literacy is berserk.

Harsha wrote: "It provides me with access to all the information I need..."

So did TV before this. Information is not the same as wisdom or enrichment.

Harsha wrote: "and has definitely made me a more knowledgeable person..."

I'm sure you may think so (many people do) but that's not likely the case. Browsing info on the net is no more edifying or 'improving oneself' than browsing magazines used to be. The internet excels in 'thin' information like news, weather, sports scores, etc.

Harsha wrote: "It has made research easier..."

Bad research, unfortunately. Untrustworthy, unreliable research which can't be used in any professional capacity. You can't even use it as a reference in a high school book report. The internet is chock-full of error, fraud, glitch, and misinformation and it erodes childhood literacy. It ruins any true research skills. Heck it even allows students to purchase term papers on-line.

Harsha wrote: "and has driven the innovations of the last two decades..."

None that are important, however; none that are necessary or vital in comparison to the demerits that accompany them. Many of these innovations are enervating at best and deadly at their worst. 'Texting' while driving, for example (just as dangerous as DUI).

Harsha wrote: "It has helped me keep in touch with friends overseas, people who I genuinely care about..."

You could do that before the internet and you also probably enjoyed it more. Distance gives fondness and charm to human relationships. Now--when you keep in touch with acquaintances--there is no allure; its perfunctory, like blowing one's nose.

Harsha wrote: "It gives me a platform to talk to others, like you, and have this discussion..."

We're trapped discussing a pointless toy and its pointless traits. You can't derive 'in-depth' discussions about anything over this medium. Its just self-defeating chat and chatter.

Harsha wrote: "To brand internet as the worst invention ever is just being paranoid and resorting to plain hyperbole..."

It would be paranoid hyperbole if I was ranting like this while the internet was still on the horizon. Now that its here--and I can rattle off several dozen facets of society, culture, and humanism which it is destroying (and no one even disagrees, that yes they are being destroyed) then surely in all fairness, you must allow that I'm not being paranoid at all; but clear-sighted. Whereas, someone like yourself is practicing blithe disregard for issues and emphasizing instead, the boost in your own personal comfort and convenience.

Harsha wrote: "P.S: Steve Jobs had nothing to do with the creation of internet...."

You don't need to mention items like this, thanks. I'm simply lumping it all together. Plus, the iPhone took all the ills of the internet and made them exponentially worse. When the net was not in competition with printed books; it could still be shrugged off as a joke. But taking over the way it has done, is clearly a menace.

Back to the OP topic: there is an "Anti-Bullying " group on Goodreads and I'm actually a member. Just FYI. Only a few participants so far; so its ideal opportunity for anyone interested to join up. Get-in-on-the-ground-floor (so as later to be able to claim we've long been "fighting for the rights of the bullied", ha)

I'm sure there are many Anti-Bullying groups on Goodreads. However, I have my doubts about these groups. Do they offer any substantial contribution to the anti-bullying movement? Do they have a concrete plan? Are they involved with any organization? Otherwise, they're just places for people to rant. Advice is given, advice is promptly forgotten and life goes on.

I'm inclined to agree with you. I asked the moderator these very questions when I joined. It does seem as if her idea was tentative and half-formed when she set-the-wheels-in-motion. Still, her heart was in the right place.

p.s. I didn't see 'many' such groups; just this one. Maybe there are others, I don't know..this one had just two members!

I can only talk about how it helped me personally. It definitely helped me in my undergrad thesis. I could watch lectures on youtube and peruse quite a few research papers on the subject. If you think it was similar to browsing magazines, then, I would have to completely disagree. Branding research as bad and unreliable is just being derogatory.

Feliks wrote: "Many innovations are enervating at best and deadly at their worst. 'Texting' while driving, for example"

This is beyond hyperbole. Just because a few people text while they drive, would you live in a world without texting? I'm sure that I can't change your views about the internet with this dialogue. I sincerely hope you find it beneficial though .

P.S: I'm just glad my prof didn't dissect my thesis in a similar way

Miss, I come from a research environment. It was heavily emphasized in both my degrees (which took place before the internet was in schools very much) and research is also part of my career. I can assure you you are speaking about 'bad research'.

Your anecdote about your thesis doesn't sound very cogent. How is a 'Youtube video' an acceptable source for a paper? What kind of professor (even an undergrad professor) would allow such a thing? And then you skated to an easy grade because you snuck looks at papers of other students posted online? Is that something to boast about?

Geez. You paid for an education, but really you were robbed of the experience of writing a bonafide thesis via traditional methods. They're the only methods which count, frankly.

Texting while driving: Maybe you live out by a lonely highway where few cars ever pass. I reside in New York and I see practically every fifth car that passes, containing a texting driver. There's even been helicopter crashes because the pilots were texting!

Statistics show it is just as dangerous to human life as DUI. Will the persons struck by a texting driver care whether the motorist was texting rather than drunk? No, they'll be just as dead. No one should be allowed to bring a phone into a car, what would you think about a law like that? You'd like it if it saved your life.

Or, do you perhaps consider human life to be not more important than dingbats gossiping and gabbing about their manicures, via text messages? You think there's something urgent about the utterly inane content of texts? It needs to be a priority of our society today? We couldn't get along without it?

What a bizarre opinion that would be. Its a technology only a few years old, what did we do before it came along? How did the world ever function?

You're right, you're not likely to shake my viewpoint on this topic.

Just sayin'

Good for you! So long and thanks for all the insights..

You're welcome to not use it if you'd like.

Just sayin'

@Pamela...someone with too much time on their hands.

That's what I think.

I mean, fine, traditional bullying (schoolyard/workplace bullies) has its (sad, pathetic) place in society, but cyber-bullying takes it to a whole new level. Cyber-bullies are lazier than your cliche "I'm gonna steal all your lunch money!" bully; because they do it over the INTERNET. All they have to do is type some words into a program, and boom, their victim has been insulted for the world to see. I certainly believe that bullying of all kinds is a serious problem, and I'd say the majority of it does qualify as verbal, or even physical abuse.
Nobody deserves that kind of pain in their lives. Everyone has the same goal. People just want to live their lives, and be as happy and successful as they possibly can be - whatever that means to them.

I think bullying is getting worse. I'm a pre-K teacher and some of my 4 and 5 year olds are doing it. Its crazy!