Thought based on an Interview of Lee Siegel

The interview of the author of Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob was by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, a comedy program. Siegel points to some dangers of internet mediated interaction. His point seemed to be that too many people were role playing on the Internet, and the lack of clues provided in the actual presence of the person doing the role playing made it too easy for others to be taken in.

Clearly there is a basis for that position. We get a lot of information from seeing the person we are communicating with. Indeed, we get information from smelling people. If we are in the same physical environment with the person, we know whether that person is sweating from the heat of from tension. A lot of that communication is implicit rather than explicit, but it takes place. We can also better provide feedback to the person we are communicating with if we are physically present.

And surely Siegel is right that young people should be warned about those who would exploit their credulity using chat rooms or social networking sites, and the credulous should be helped to deal with the unscrupulous.

But people love to play, and role playing is something we do all the time. Poker has become a popular for television programming largely because it is fun to watch people fooling each other, and getting caught in the act. In this political season, it seems very clear that candidates are using these skills of deception, and that voters need to use their skills of detecting deception -- both of which are learned in part through play.

Of course, there is a huge area of Internet mediated communication that is not deceptive, including I suspect the majority of communication that goes on in chat rooms and social networking sites. Lets hope that we don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

My son suggests that Siegel's book is not likely to be that good, so I didn't provide a link to it. The interview, which is linked above, is fun.