I am a bartender and a hacker. I go out at night. I have tons of friends. I can have an engaging conversation on the train with a complete stranger. I think I'm fairly social, moreover everyone else says I'm really social.
But at the same time I love Facebook. I'm on it all the time. I talk to people about their facebook comments, face to face. I talk to people telling them to expect a cool link on some new HTML 5.
Its not artificial, its just "the new hotness". I honestly think I can be hyper-social now, both through the net and the real world.
On the other hand if you have a problem with what I said then it's just your another problem. I prefer to talk to people about life things not about Facebook comments. YMMV
> "it's artificial when it happens at the same time when real communication is in place already but people turn to their twitter or whatever"
Yet... even before smartphones, before you could get lost in Facebook or Twitter on a bus, people still weren't talking to each other. The fact that we are placed in a situation with great social potential, yet do nothing about it, is hardly the fault of this technology we've created. It's not as if buses and trains were the hub of social affairs prior to the invention of the mobile web.
I guess we are very responsible for the impact of the technology we create. That's why I'm saying all this stuff here - we are not mere hackers who give people the toys or tools to work with and forget what and why we created it. With every new web application we're creating a new way people will spend their time (in the biz lingua: new business processes blah blah). It's our responsibility to make it meaningful for the people.
It's like with the mass media: some people say that making a silly tv show is what people want but my whole point is that such thinking is broken. People want to relax with what's on air and that's all -- they don't want to spend their time making superfluous choices to check what's really good for them. Everyone has such little time for entertainment in today's world. So if you're broadcasting something it's your responsibility to make it meaningful for the people, not their responsibility. I'm thinking in the same way of internet tools and applications.
It wasn't so long ago that anything computer-related was dismissed as imaginary bits floating around a computer, with no lasting impact on life. It also wasn't so long ago that anything internet-related was dismissed as artificial, with no impact on real life.
You would think we'd realize by now that there's nothing artificial about the sort of connection and communication that we practice over the internet.
Facebook isn't the thing preventing people from communicating "in real life" - people haven't been chatting on buses for decades, long before the invention of the internet. If anything, the iPod has done more to damage the social fabric of urban areas than smartphones.
It is the curse of the city - never before has mankind lived in a denser conglomeration of his/her peers, yet been more alone. To blame this on technology instead of sociology seems misguided.
Networks are not social - they are mediums to carry what counters produce.
Groups of people can be social - but if they use less expressive way of communication (read: words typed as text without the body language) then these groups of people are less social, not more. And uttering a phrase "social network" thousand times will not change this reality.
Are books less expressive than in-person communication? I'd say they're differently expressive.
But of course, if somebody doesn't want to think on it because I offended his beloved toy for communicating, he will tend to argue endlessly instead. That's one of the most basic human behaviors: everyone is justifying what he's spending time on.
There are many ways to socialize. I prefer some, but other people have vastly different preferences. If you're connecting with someone else on a personal level, I don't see how that's not social.
I voted your comment up, but for someone who believes this, you sure seem to spend a lot of time on HN "artificially communicating".