I've been intrigued by the Rebelution's new post about cell phone use and misuse, since I can speak philosophically from much experience with related subjects. I commented thus:
In one way, ubiquitous cell phone use decreases responsible independency: if you're always asking someone else's opinion, you won't make judgment calls on your own.
I don't use a cell phone, although my parents do. I've never had txting; I ran the IM run-around the last year I did debate, mostly to communicate with my partner who lived too far away to visit often. It became addicting, and I'm glad to leave it alone (as I'm sure you are too, Brett). Lonely people use IM like they do email to look for affirmation and companionship; they don't really want to give it unless it is necessary for the above goal, or to imitate the manners of others. The other time I've used it was when I spent a month teaching English in China, and welcomed real-time conversations with someone familiar (my family and a couple friends).
Forums (or should it be fora?) are useful when limited by subject matter. HSD is fine while you are competing in the league, as long as you keep a Christian spirit. To incessantly te controversy corners turns is a distortion of the perspective of the original forum... which was to facilitate preparation for speaking, not an end in itself.
However, the main danger of discoursing with unbelievers (or those like them) on matters of moral significance is not that you will assimilate ungodly ideas, although that does happen. The first and main danger is of tracing ungodly patterns of speech and heart. The ideas can be resisted by willpower and bullying. The attitudes are created by willpower and bullying. You can't win as long as these are your constant companions. The same thing goes for friends met in other conTEXTs. "...[Y]ou may learn his ways and get yourself ensnared." (Prov. 22:25)
Other purposes for communication make online messaging useful. My dad uses a Cabinet Makers Association forum to exchange tips for woodworking.
The advantage of letter-writing comes from having more time to think of what to say, learning to ask important questions, anticipating needs, and putting more thought into the words.
Read the diary of John Quincy Adams and the letters among his family while he was in his teens.
Email loops, in my experience, are more on point than forums or chat rooms, because they preserve the letter-writing form rather than the tavern-style forum. This is at least partly because list participants don’t have a specific location to give the illusion of face-to-face colloquialism. Did I just liken an online forum to a tavern? A prettier comparison is the committee meeting or conference call, but the real prototype is the Socratic restroom graffiti dialogue (an ancient Mediterranean tradition).
An email list is also useful because it is subject-oriented. If you read Scott Turow’s autobiographical novel One L, you find Harvard Law School in the 1970s an extremely competitive environment. The only way for spoiled egos to gain recognition is by excelling at legal knowledge, so students give themselves heart and soul to extra research, outlines, and study groups.
In the same way, reading email from fellow enthusiasts of bird watching or Biblical Greek, cooking or cabinet making, literature or law, microbiology or Milton, Middle East or Middle Ages, mechanics or mathematics, monetary policy or music, will bring vitality to problems in that area of life. You will spend half an hour researching the deductibility of business expenses because someone asked about it. If the question were instead found in the back of your textbook, you would have guessed at it and flipped to the answer. Learning has a social element you can’t replace, which is why my distance-learning paralegal classmates and I started a Yahoo group.
Having friends to email only when I’m thinking on a certain topic is useful, but at the same time, it would be wrong to call someone a friend with whom I don’t share many good things of life. How can I meet an Internet friend’s needs when he is neglecting his family to talk with me? I would thus make the costliest friends those under my own roof with whom I do owe a duty of care. I’d then say befriend those in my neighborhood and church, where I know I can give to them physically as well as spiritually.
Social life has a learning element. Will you learn of good or ill? With fellow disciples of Jesus, discuss those interests that feed the spirit rather than the flesh. Also discuss those topics that will make you more valuable to your employer. Hobbies are wonderful when they involve family, as G.K. Chesterton points out in his Autobiography (ch. 2). The house should always be bigger on the inside than on the outside. But as Chesterton wrote also in Heretics (ch. 17),
What we really desire of any man conducting any business is that the full force of an ordinary man should be put into that particular study … We do not in the least wish that our particular law-suit should pour its energy into our barrister’s games with his children, or rides on his bicycle, or meditations on the morning star. But we do, as a matter of fact, desire that his games with his children, and his rides on his bicycle, and his meditations on the morning star should pour something of their energy into our law-suit.
A man’s love for God should pour out into his work as he serves an earthly master – or teacher. Thus, there is nothing better than for a man to find satisfaction in his life’s work. Side interests ought to make one more useful rather than less useful. Social life should contribute to both godliness and contentment, thereby producing great gain.
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