I was an early adopter of AOL. In the 832,000s. They hadn’t even cracked a million by that time.
And as the Internet grew more popular, people started worrying that this was destroying communities, increasing isolationism, and making it too easy to shut ourselves off from the outside world.
I was talking with my friend Lalita Amos one day about this idea, and she pointed out that it wasn’t the Internet that destroyed communities, it was television. If anything, the Internet has restored community.
Think about it: Back before the days of TV and radio, you had to rely on everybody else to survive. It took a village just to get through a year, let alone raise a child. You were close to your neighbors, family lived nearby, and you took care of each other.
Then radio and TV came along, and people started spending more time inside. Pretty soon, we were in our houses being entertained.
“Our shared experiences were what we saw on TV,” Lalita said. “It wasn’t what we did together, it was what we all saw on TV and talked about the next day.”
As we got more channels, and as technology advanced, people had more things to watch, with fewer things we held in common.
Now, thanks to things like Facebook, Twitter, and specialized sites like Smaller Indiana, we’re getting connected in ways we never could. We can find people we have odd things in common with. People who like independent coffee shops. People who write radio theatre plays. People who collect marbles. There’s a community for everyone just based on your interests alone.
Or there are mini-communities within geographic communities. I belong to a community of networkers, a community of social media professionals, and a community of Indianapolis Colts fans.
In fact, I met Lalita Amos strictly because of Smaller Indiana and Twitter, two online communities. We never would have met if it hadn’t been for those online communities.
And what do we talk about when we get together? Our shared communities, not television. Thanks to social media, we’re no longer sharing what we watched passively; we’re actively doing things, creating content, sharing ideas, and talking about that.
To all the naysayers who think the Internet is destroying our communities, look again. Sign up for a Facebook account and see if you can find people you went to high school with, used to work with, or have something in common with. Create the community you want, rather than being stuck with the ones you live with.
