John Curall-Emergence

I also had trouble figuring out the point of this reading as relating to class. It was interesting, but I was kind left going "ok, and..." The one thing this did make me think of is what effect the "virtual world" that we all increasingly live in will effect the physical world. We live in a world where the majority of our social interactions are online and through text messaging rather than face to face or even voice contact. Will this have a positive or negative effect on the world at large? Is this just part of our evolution? Much like the effect of moving from sidewalks to cars, that was mentioned in the reading, moving from a physical to a virtual world can possibly have a huge impact on the development of the world itself. Many of us would say that this would likely be a negative one. However, there is one important difference in these two transformations. When we moved from sidewalks to cars we reduced our interactions. Whereas with the shift to a virtual world we have increased our interactions on a global scale whether or not we believe those interactions to be less meaningful. No longer is the "neighbor" that we have interactions with limited to physically proximity. Our "neighbor" can be anywhere in the world. Much like we discussed when we talked about the effect the telegraph had on communities so too the emergence of the "virtual world" has a profound effect on our development. Only time will tell if that effect is a positive or negative one. We always loose something when we evolve. The question is do we gain more than we loose?