How Has Technology Transformed Human Communication?

The manner in which technological innovations, especially the Internet and its accompanying tools, has transformed human communications methods is unprecedented. Communication has always been an important building block in the construction of societies from prehistoric to contemporary times and will remain so as long as the language faculty of humans exists. The advent of technological items such as the telephone and computers began the transition from face-to-face communication to non-face-to face ones. Even physicists will agree that the time for long-distance messages, sent via the Internet, to travel is shorter than the time it would take light to do so for the same distance. A peculiar characteristic of the most popular online-based communication …show more content…
Even when someone finds another person’s comment about a topic offensive, the discussion remained within their locality. However, the capacity to tweet, share, like, post, and follow any topic or discussions by millions of user has made communicating different. It is now necessary for individuals to consider the effect of their views about others before communicating it to a community of unfamiliar people that have the power to influence the opinion of others. Ideally, social media platforms were established in order to make collaborations and cooperation between people from a different geographical location easy. According to Gladwell, the founders of Facebook explained that the platform was created as a medium for people to connect with their loved ones despite the obvious barriers of doing so. As it became popular and wide accepted, its potential to define the opinion of others about an individualality also changed. An evidence of the power of users of social networking sites to determine the fate others can be obtained from the experience of Sacco and others that did not fully understand how these platforms have changed communication. Ronson explained that the various effects of the negative euphoria that Sacco tweets generated on the Internet for the period that it lasted was simply part of social …show more content…
The establishment of relationships that last a long term regardless of the type is dependent on the interactions of these stages. For example, the type of personal information revealed during the orientation stage is critical to the transition to other phases. Siegel explained that in this era of social media forums, the connections between these stages are more complex than in the traditional face-to-face system of creating relationships. The inability of Internet platforms to allow people derive information from the body language of others inhibits the success that can be attained during the exploration, which is the critical stage of building social and personal relationships. Carr asserts that high incidence of crimes such fraud, social engineering, and cyberbullying among others, is a major limitation of online relationship. Although tools such video chats and voice calls that are available can enable a user to understand the behavior of the person on the other side of the conversation, their use in forming trusting relationships is limited. Finally, a positive effect of the Internet on relationships is that an individual can use the activities of others on social media platforms to gain into their personality through their comments or posts about important social issues, lifestyle, and the kind of people they relate. As a matter