EL336: WM Turkle

From page 491 of Writing Material:

"When people pursue relationships through letter writing, we are not concerned that they are abandoning their real lives."

The virtual world does provide masks for people. The Internet gives the user the possibility to interact with millions of people all over the globe at any given time of the day, with any persona they wish to use. Today with all the social networking web sites, people are beginning to judge others more and more increasingly by the way they present themselves online. This is where the creation of "netiquette" is useful. Standards in correspondence evolved in manuscript culture--when was the last time you wrote a formal letter without, "Dear ______," as the opener and your signature at the end? Probably never happened, unless you were scribbling a post-it note to your mother about your plans for the day. The same kind of standards exist in digital culture, it's just that people know they can get away with acting however they choose online. There are no consequences to acting inappropriately online--unless you're caught by authorities. The Internet is such a vast world, however, that authorities cannot possibly patrol the world wide web thoroughly enough to prevent things like cyber bullying and e-bay rip-offs. The Internet connects us to one another yet at the same time separates us because the lack of person to person interaction makes the relationship less human, and therefore less important to us (in general).