Blogging has made the World a Village
Being from a small village in a remote part of the world (originally that is, before I moved to sunny Spain) taught me a few things in life.
It gave me the perspective that one only truly gets by being from a place where everyone leaves their doors unlocked when they go out, and everyone knows each others name. I have also now spent 25 years in a truly cosmopolitan society where one would never leave ones door unlocked, so I understand the flip side of the equation as well.
The recent world events including the tragic death of Benazir Bhutto, have brought to my attention the way that the whole world is to some extent developing a more “village” attitute, being brought together by online forums, social networking sites, and to a massive extent blogs!
My ramblings in the last post about the news brought in about 150 more readers than normal for one of my posts, all from google having searched relevant terms (a few even left comments) - and this does go to show that the whole interaction thing inside us really isnt dead, its just misplaced!
There was a time when everybody knew their neighbours, and now it seems more likely that you have friends online, by facebook or myspace, but haven’t a clue who your neighbours actually are. I suppose its just a sign of the times and a progression to the globalisation that runs our international economies today - its just extended now to also include our private lives as well!
Is this a good or bad thing? Well, thats totally down to personal perspective, however purely on a darwinistic viewpoint surely over development of online social groups at the detriment to developing “real” social skills is very dangerous - this is the first generation of humans in history that can realistically have a full social network and never really meet anybody.
I wonder what that will do for peoples social skills over the next 50 years?