I love this topic! I suspect my take on how technology enhances - or detracts from - relationships will be different based on my membership in the baby boom generation. I remember the day we got a color TV (I was in elementary school) and the only choose besides the big 3 networks were 3 local UHF channels that took a lot of shifting of the rabbit ears to see without snow! No computers- an electric typewriter in college was a huge advance! We had 78 and 45 records - bet many students haven't actually seen an 8 track player or tape in action! My first work computer had a floppy disk to start the operating system and the various programs and we felt so advanced! I will spare you all the walk down memory lane with the literally hundreds of examples of technological advances that have captivated my imagination in my 50+ years, but the point I am trying to make is that my perspective is shaped by the doors and possibilities I have seen technology open over the years, including the ways in which it has enhanced my relationships.
Personal connections across time and space - When I left Pennsylvania in 1979 to go to grad school, I never returned. After a few short years in Texas, I returned to Massachusetts which became my home. Back then staying in touch with family and friends was hard - land lines were the only real option besides in person visits. I never saw my family enough and lost touch with almost all my high school and college friends, but that has all changed with cell phones and the internet. Facebook has connected me on a daily basis with siblings and cousins, enabled me to watch neices and nephews grow up and to form relationships with them that twice yearly visits just can't forge, and has allowed me to reconnect with friends and acquaintances from school. People I forgot I even missed and with whom I have gone years without contact. Some of my closest friends from college and people I wish I had known better when we were younger. Rebuilding relationships with HS friends as adults is something I could never do without today's technology Just today a high school friend and my nephew in NJ reached out to comment on a Facebook post about an education conference. We can share our passion for education up and down the East Coast from Boston to Atlanta.
Education - I am currently a doctoral candidate for a PhD in Higher Education Administration at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln finishing my dissertation. This education was only possible for me because of technology. As a distance student, I was able to take classes at times convenient to me and use the resources available in a library 1300 miles away. Throught this experience I connected with real people who are my faculty members and whose personalities I have come to know and appreciate as much as their teaching styles. I connected with classmates, sharing important course lessons and developing friendships. And an added benefit to my classes was the time and ability to think, reflect and craft responses carefully rather than in the heat of the moment in a classroom. Through Blackboard I could dialogue over several days will ALL my classmates without the cachophony that sometimes happens in a classroom. For me, as an older, self-motivated student I have no doubt that my technology driven degree program offered the same quality as an in person model and resulted in MORE work than I might have done in another format because I was the one pushing myself the hardest.
Professional Development - Others in our Student Affairs division have talked about the value of Twitter, Linked In and other technologies in connecting with colleagues from across the country, and I would concur. I was slow to the Twitter table - who cares what I can say in 140 characters and why would I care what random other people had to eat today? However, after lurking for a while and watching the community in action, I realized that when a group comes together to Twitter about a shared interest, the learning potential is high. In addition to #sachat, I share with other students in #sadoc, get support for my healthy lifestyle, share my passion for many sports, banter with other similarly liberal minded people I may never meet IRL (in real life) and have re-established a network of strong women professionals from whom I gain support and can count on excellent dialogue about the many lives we all balance. When days go by and I haven't been connected, I miss it and carve out the time to do so.
I guess it's pretty clear that I think technology is more a boon to building and maintaining relationships than a detriment. I hear the arguments about its potential to isolate, to distract, to allow us to more freely bully others, etc., but the question I would ask is this - Is it technology that does this? Or is it the people who USE the technology that create the negative aspects? For example, how is texting in class any more of a distraction than the good old fashioned note writing and passing that I did as a student before we had cell phones? Is it really more distracting, or just a different form of distraction?
I cannot deny that the way technology enables people to cyberbully others behind the cover of anonymity is disturbing and that as a society we need to get a handle on what it is that causes the bullying in the first place. On the other hand, I can think of several stories in which the use of technology has saved lives when e-friends were able to send help to hurt friends across oceans. And how would we come together in times of disaster to help others without today's technology? How much good does this create when we can sit in our living room and feel the pain of others and be motivated to DO something about it? I continually wonder at this application of technology today.
As an optimist, I believe technology has enhanced MY relationships and has the potential to enhance YOURS too - what do you think?
Check out the other Blogfest posts at http://www.bridgew.edu/sil/bsusmw/blogfest.cfm
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