Remember the days before MySpace, Facebook and Twitter when you actually had to pick up the phone to find out where your friends were or when having lunch with someone wasn’t accompanied by their blackberry and their entire network? Yeah, me neither.

Fortunately, this week’s readings brought some insight into social technologies and their affect on our society. Castell in particular, posed an interesting “chicken versus the egg” question in asking whether technology is determined by society or if society collectively determines technology, more broadly stated, are we choosing how our society moves or is it technology that is moving it forward?

It’s a question, I think, that can be answered in part by analyzing the daily habits of the average person. One that is summed up fairly well with some statistics from EmailStatCenter which found that 43 percent of e-mail users check their e-mail first thing in the morning, 40 percent check it in the middle of the night and 26 percent of people admitted to checking their e-mail on their laptop while in their pajamas in bed.

On top of that, 15 percent of Americans described themselves as “addicted to e-mail,” if that isn’t a clear answer, I’m not sure what is. Technology is changing our lives, its changing our headlines, our writing, our journalism and how we interact with each other.

Social networking sites allow us to be more social than ever while never having to leave the house – something that is almost oxymoronic if you ask me. But, they are now places where you can chat, e-mail, share pictures, find out what people are doing, who they’re dating and where in the world they’ve been all in one place, the only question you have to figure out is which one or ones to use.

In this sense, technology is definitely a driving force in our society. Just in the amount of time that I personally have been exposed to and using the internet, online communities and social networking have changed immensely and continue to change on what feels like a daily basis.

Though it’s true that populations have to pick up on and start using social networking sites in order for them to function successfully, I think their very presence in our culture and the sheer numbers of them that exist mean that technology is number one and will continue to dominate until our thumbs are tired of text messaging and our eyes are too burnt out to stare at a computer screen.

Discussion Questions:

Are online social networking sites helping us interact as a society or are they hindering our experiences with interpersonal communication?

Why have social networking sites become such a phenomenon and where can they go from here?