The question: Do computers make us more human?
It's long been understood that it's part of human nature to make tools. Computers, like other tools, are evidence of our humanity, not a threat to it. It's a well rehearsed argument that tools themselves are not moral; we have to make choices about how and when to use the things we create, and make sure that they serve our purposes, not do us harm. So of course we should question the value and impact of new technology. But often the thing we fear is not a genuine threat at all.
It seems amusing now to read the letter Charles Lamb wrote to Coleridge a couple of hundred years ago, expressing his fears concerning the new railways. He believed that the physical effect on the brain of travelling at speeds above thirty miles per hour would cause insanity. The rapidity with which computers have changed our modes of communication have thrown up similar exaggerated fears. But I think that a few years from now we'll laugh at such cautionary statements, and realise that the real fear was simply of change itself.
The worries that hit the headlines last week have already been discussed extensively by education professionals, and by parents at the school gate. The dangers are well known of children being "groomed" in chat-rooms, of the proliferation of internet porn and financial scams. Students whose antics and attitudes are liberally posted all over Facebook have been known to damage their employability, and bloggers have lost their jobs by writing in public about things that have embarrassed their employers.
But despite these pitfalls, there are plenty of benefits to social media. For most people it isn't a replacement for true friendship, but a means of organising their social life, keeping in touch with family and friends who are travelling or living far away, expressing their views in the written word. Real writing careers have been launched through blogging, jobs are more often found that lost, and real friendships, not just virtual ones, are made and nurtured.
Undoubtedly, the media that brings benefits can also be used in a malign fashion. But the idea that social media isolates people and sabotages the possibility of true friendships is a misguided fear. The real dangers are more to do with security and privacy. Social media certainly opens up more portals through which both data and network connections can be harvested. More worrying, though, is people's apparent lack of awareness of how the internet blurs the line between public and private conversation. Sitting at a screen in the safety of your room it's easy to imagine you are writing just to a little group of friends. People (and not just the young) say unguarded things on Facebook and blogs - things they might say in private but would never say on radio or TV – without realising that absolutely anyone can read it, and will still be able to read it years from now. Being web-savvy involves registering that fact mentally, and keeping it clearly in focus whenever you write on-screen. My personal rule is to remember that my family, my employer, my best friend or my worst enemy might be reading – if what I write would it create difficulties for me with any of them, would it still be worth saying?
It takes time for the genuine usefulness of new technologies to settle. Remember all those apricot and avocado bathrooms that were installed in the 1980s? They came about through novelty, not taste - technology made the colours possible, and their popularity was based on the 'just because we can' rule. In just the same way, the clunky and time-wasting aspects of social networking will fade into insignificance once the novelty wears off, and what's really useful will become commonplace. By then we'll no doubt be worrying about the impact of some other technological advance that we haven't yet thought of.