Читать книгу Closer Together, Further Apart: The Effect of Technology and the Internet on Parenting, Work, and Relationships - Jennifer Schneider - Страница 5

The date that divides human history into two equal parts is well within living memory. The world of today is as different from the world I was born in as that world was from Julius Caesar’s. I was born in the middle of human history, to date, roughly. Almost as much has happened since I was born as happened before.

—Kenneth Boulding, economist (1910–1993)

Throughout most of human history, the ways in which people communicated and interacted remained relatively constant, especially over the course of any single generation. The only real communication changes from the dawn of time until the mid to late nineteenth century occurred with the advent of language, the written word, and the arrival of wired communication via the telegraph.

In the past, most people became better at meeting and mating as they matured, thanks to the wisdom of experience. However, over the course of one’s lifetime back then the basics of human interaction remained roughly unchanged—relationships began and developed through introduction, face-to-face interpersonal interaction, and the occasional letter. We met, talked, batted eyelashes, gossiped, broke bread, coupled up, sometimes had sex, and sometimes killed each other. Occasionally some of us skipped the earlier tasks and went straight to the coupling, sex, or killing, but the general idea—that our relationship with other human beings was, until very recently, almost wholly dependent on our proximity to them—remained intact. We have always needed to be in the same physical space at the same time to interact. But in recent years the meaning of “proximity” and “being in the same place at the same time” has changed dramatically. Telecommunication—telegrams, telephones, radio, television, and, more recently, the Internet, smartphones, tablets, and other forms of digital technology—has turned the entire planet into one giant room where anyone and everyone with Internet access can easily and instantly connect and interact.