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BrettJohnsonSecondPaper 3 - 25 Dec 2009 - Main.BrettJohnson
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Ready for review. Comments are welcome. | | | The effect of the internet on personal relationships may be demonstrated by first looking at what occurred in a very non-internet society. I grew up in a tiny town in Wyoming and graduated from high school with eighteen classmates. The closest stoplight was 30 miles away; we had one convenience store/gas station, a church and a post office. The sign entering “town” said “Population 100” but when I returned to visit a few years later it said “Population 200,” which leads me to believe, based on the round numbers, that the survey methods may not have been precise. There was no satellite television and cable was not available. We had a single television station (NBC), and our 19” tube television, adorned with tin-foil antenna, allowed us a fuzzy (black and white in my early years) picture. Competing with the television was one FM radio station and two AM stations, one of which was talk radio and the other was a country format so they were not of great value to a child/teenager. Under those circumstances, we were willing to tolerate poor quality television because it was the only game in town. We would sit loyally through atrocious local commercials, blackouts, and poor quality programming. Nobody would have endured that had today’s entertainment options been available. | |
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< | Similar to a lack of entertainment choices, my home town provided a very limited supply of potential dating/marriage partners. Persons who were no closer related than second cousin—on rare occasions first cousin once removed (she was hot and alcohol was involved) were fair game as a potential mate. Because of a lack of other options, there were many pairings of people who probably did not have a lot in common and would most likely have not even associated with each other had there been other options. Just as we watched poor quality television programming, however, people made due with what was available in the dating/marriage department. It is apparent that one reason people seek out and stay in relationships is because they do not have better options. | >
> | Similar to a lack of entertainment choices, my home town provided a very limited supply of potential dating/marriage partners. Persons who were no closer related than second cousin—on rare occasions first cousin once removed were fair game as a potential mate. Because of a lack of other options, there were many pairings of people who probably did not have a lot in common and would most likely have not even associated with each other had there been other options. Just as we watched poor quality television programming, however, people made due with what was available in the dating/marriage department. It is apparent that one reason people seek out and stay in relationships is because they do not have better options. | | | Relationships in an Internet Society |
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