When i was a child the children that lived next door to me and down my street were my best friends. We would play on our bikes all day and our home time would be when the street lights came on.
Nowadays though, i know that the lady at no 3 leaves at 6:30 like me on Tuesday mornings, and that the boy at no 1 has a personalised number plate “Keirun’ but i do not know my neighbours. Perhaps its because i am older, and riding my bike around like a motor vehicle has lost its appeal or perhaps (and more likely) it’s because I’ve replaced physical social interaction with virtual social interaction.
I no longer need to go outside to make friends and communicate because i can do it from my bedroom inside.

From the reading, and the exert that Betty chose for the symposium “A few external links connecting these clusters keep them from being isolated from the rest of the world.” stood out and reminded me of the film Wall-e, and the scene where people are floating around with chairs and laptops and no one is communicating and yet they are passing by each other. They’re so isolated from the world in every physical way, there is no face to face communication, no hand shaking or high fiving, no personal displays of affection- nothing, they’re flying past each other but are too immersed in their screens that the world passes them by.

This reminds me of the train ride i take to and from Uni in which people sit next to each other, huddled and close yet never speak to each other because their noses are stuck in their phones.

Is this what our world is coming to? Thousands of people close and with the ability to talk and make new friends, communicate with new people but don’t even try.
At least once a week i get a friend request on Facebook from someone I’ve never met, obviously trying to start some type of relationship, yet when we’re so close on a train or walking down the street no one wants or asks to be my friend. Yes social interaction is good for family and friends that are separated by distance but its not a replacement for communication.