« Illinois Law Review, Issue 2008:3 (May 2008) | Main | The Culture of Cynicism Eats Its Own »
April 22, 2008
Facebook Frenzy: Faking Friendships?
Thoreau was famously skeptical of communications technology, wryly observing that when the telegraph connected Maine and Texas, citizens of each state could find they have little to say to one another. Shannon Vallor, Professor of Philosophy at Santa Clara University, struck a similarly cautious note at a fascinating discussion of the ethics of social networking at Stanford. Mining the rich tradition of virtue theory in moral philosophy, Vallor observed that social networking can both undermine and reinforce the persistent dispositions of character that promote human flourishing. Here are some similar observations of Vallor's from another panel:
[W]hat impact is social networking technology having on the ways that people build and sustain close interpersonal relationship and, in particular, the communicative virtues that help such relationships to flourish? I will identify five communicative virtues that I believe warrant careful reflection in connection with social networking technology.
First is patience. Patience is, without a doubt, one of the most important virtues for sustaining close relationships. It develops through communicative activities such as listening. For example, listening to a friend tell a story or recount a lengthy anecdote without jumping in and finishing the story oneself or interrupting with hey, that reminds me of this thing that happened to me yesterday. Patience, once it becomes not just a momentary indulgence of the other, but an enduring part of one’s own character, that is, a virtue, allows one’s relationships with others to manifest deeper, mutual understanding, greater and more lasting commitments and a feeling on the part of others that you are willing to connect with them on their terms and not just yours; that your interest in them does not end with their ability to keep you constantly amused or fascinated.
Yet the style of communication favored by digital natives and fostered by social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, privileges brevity and directness. And, thus, we must ask whether, and in what ways, such technologies can also encourage and reward patience as a virtue.
Second, fidelity. Fidelity is a crucial part of any enduring relationship. It develops through the communicative practice of openly expressing commitments to another and honoring them and, in that way, honoring the uniqueness and the value of the relationship itself. Expressions of fidelity range from the simple commitment to go to a movie on a Saturday night with a friend, even if a more exciting opportunity later presents itself, to the lifelong commitment expressed in a vow of marriage. The expression of fidelity shows that you do not regard the other as replaceable, that even if someone else comes along who can occupy the same role and deliver the same social benefits, this could not, for you, be a substitute for the original bond.
Yet we must ask whether the focus on friend collecting, on many social networking sites, by stressing a purely quantitative measure of friendship, may undermine the virtue of fidelity by providing a framework in which friends are each assigned identical unit values and in which one’s sociality is measured by the sum total of those units, rather than the irreplaceable value of any single relationship.
Perhaps symptomatic of my own impatience, I'll leave Vallor's discussions of honesty, perseverance, and tolerance for another time. I would like at some point to ground my own reservations about the Blackberry in a philosophical language as rich as hers.
PS: For those interested in the philosophy of technology, the new journal Studies in Ethics, Law, and Technology looks very interesting.
Posted by Frank Pasquale at April 22, 2008 12:00 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.concurringopinions.com/movabletype/mt-tb.cgi/3550.
