Is face to face dead?

7 points by greg_____ory 8 years ago | 6 comments

I live in NYC. I am surrounded by people. They're above me and below me. I pass thousands of people every day on the street. I don't talk to them or know their names, I certainly don't ask them for help.

I ask blogs what movie to watch. I ask YouTube to show me how to tie a tie. I ask Udemy for learning. I ask Facebook for an update on my social life. This list could go on forever...

kidmenot 8 years ago |

You know, we're probably doing it wrong. The Internet allows you to obtain many, many of the day-to-day answers in the blink of an eye. One would think that this is great, because theoretically, by virtue of such a shorter question-answer loop, you are freeing up more time to interact with your fellow human beings, have meaningful conversations with them, learn from them.

What I think happens is this: most people simply don't care that much about making contact. Not so much because everything can be found on the Internet, but rather because they are turning into less of a social animal than, maybe, we as a species used to be in the past.

In a way, I would argue that the fact that we can be more independent because BosnianBill on YouTube teaches you how to pick locks without you needing to ever leave the house, means that you feel like you don't need other people to be around in order to get answers or learn some cool skill.

To be completely honest, while I don't have any experience of living in any city that can be considered even remotely big, I have a hunch that, ironically enough, living in a huge city such as NYC is a bit alienating. I said "ironically" because I would guess there are more social happenings than you could partake in even if you could do it as a full-time job.

Ultimately, I think it boils down to trying not to forget that the Internet is valuable, but a good number of people are more valuable. Be it for their knowledge, for their humor or just their kindness. As with everything else, I believe one should find some sort of equilibrium between online resources and human interaction.

Easier said than done, though. The big likes are instant gratification, while maintaining a good friendship is a lot of hard, long term work. And today "long term" is a word we tend to dislike when it comes to getting gratification.

I don't know if any of this makes any sense, as I basically just jotted down my thoughts as I went.

rajeshp1986 8 years ago |

I was thinking about the same thing for quite sometime now. I moved from India to US last year and was surprised to see how low face to face interaction here is. People are generally on their phone in trains, parks and other public places and don't bother to really interact in-person. I have also noticed that so many people are so lonely here and have only friends on social-media. They feel amazing about their life on Instagram or snapchat but have no one to share feelings personally or spend time with. People here don't marry or get into relationship to save money. That's how economy and technology is changing the society. I was thinking about creating an app where people can meet totally unrelated people outside their facebook network. That can be life saver for some people.

devdevdev83 8 years ago |

It's not "dead", but our brains have now been trained to get its neurotransmitters differently. We used to feel the fulfillment of achieving something, learning, or friendly comfort through human interaction. Now, people can get it via screens which takes less effort both physically and psychologically (having to get over little awkwardness). We are programmed to gather the most with the least effort, so naturally people end up preferring the phone.

This is actually bad, because we are slowly losing our face-to-face interaction skills and become worse at reading expressions/reactions.

People say that it's no different from the 80's and show a photo of people reading newspapers on a bus, but I've yet to see photos of people reading them on their 1st dates.

tiredwired 8 years ago |

Physical location does not matter. Why live in NYC? Why do the big tech companies build huge headquarters and make workers commute? Why do interviewers try to determine if you are a good culture fit when all they really care about is how quickly you can produce quality code?

zhte415 8 years ago |

Only as dead as you let it be. Keep the human touch. It is special and, depending on the industry you're in, quite rare.

blocker_chain 8 years ago |

With the way this world is moving, unfortunately it's only going to get worse.