Effects of Communication Technology On Local Communities - Community Use

Community Use

Common examples of communication technologies for communication purposes are telephones, cell phones, and computers.

The telephone brought people closer together in the sense that distance did not inhibit a phone call, but it also had an unanticipated effect, according to some early studies that people spent less time actually in each other's presence. Starting in the 1890s people began to replace visiting with telephone calls, which were briefer and less personal. It is tempting to use such evidence to decide that human beings are becoming progressively alienated from one another, and that machines have interposed themselves between them. Rather than conclude that networked communication substitutes for personal contact, one can just as easily argue that they amplify and preserve already established relationships. One can conclude the telephone was used to alleviate loss of contact caused by increasing demands on people's time to those in the community.

Millions of people go online daily. Rather than isolating users in a virtual world, the Internet extends communities in the real world. The Internet is used to connect people in individualized and flexible social networks rather than in fixed and grounded groups. Some dedicate most of their lives to the online community. The Internet supplants activities, like watching television, rather than other forms of social life.

In addition to communication, the Internet has become an important source of information. Tourist use the internet to find directions for popular hot spots, students use the internet as an educational tool for schoolwork, and shoppers use the internet to stay connected to distanced friends and relatives by e-mail, chat or Instant Messaging (IM). By using the Internet it both expands communities and changes it in subtle ways.

Between 1997 and 2001, the number of Americans using computers increased from 137 million to 174 million, 27 percent, while the online population rose by 152 percent. Three-quarters of Americans over the age of two had accessed the Internet. Instant messaging has spread. A decade ago, the Internet was mainly North American, and largely the domain of young, educated, urban, white men. It has since become widely used. More than one-third of all American adults are now using Instant Messaging. As more people go online, the digital divide recedes. Yet even as the overall percentage of people online rises, differences in usage rates persist: between affluent and poor, young and old, men and women, more and less educated, urban and rural and English and non-English readers. In the United States, 79 percent of relatively affluent people with a family income of $75,000 or more were Internet users in September 2001. Just 25 percent of poor people with a family income of less than $15,000 were online. There is still a median between poor people with overall technology access then the wealthy. The poor cannot afford the technological tools that are invented in an increasing fashion leaving them behind.