"There is an anthropological observation that most of us can only keep track of a couple hundred people- a village-worth. The rise of cities just led us to define that village sociologically instead of geographically."
As a college student, I come across a couple of hundred people everyday walking to class, eating lunch, studying in the library, going to see a movie, and more but I only know a small percentage of the people I see and even interact with. The fact of the matter is although I pass by people, wait behind them in line, stand in elevators with them, ride the bus with them, even sit in the same classes, I hardly ever really interact with any of them. In fact, the only strangers I talk to are the ones taking my order or the ones I accidentally run into when not paying attention to where I am walking. This is an extremely small percentage. Moreover, come to think of it, I hardly notice strangers specifically at all because I am so in tune with my phone and communicating with my friends through text messages and Facebook.
The size of the world is shrinking in terms of communication of social interactions. The amount of people I "keep track of" does not include the plenty of people who I go to class with or even the ones I share a dorm building with. My friends are across the nation; the ones I met while on a cruise, a trip to Europe, the ones I went to camp with, the family members I see only occasionally and yet I know the triumphs and trials of their lives through Facebook and text messages. These interactions are trivial and nothing like a real face-to-face conversation so the question becomes, if our everyday technological society is losing a bit of their humanity through limiting interactions to words on a lighted screen?
These interactions are now a part of the culture that makes up today's society. This is a global phenomenon that only seems to be increasing in one direction of innovation on a monumental speed. Of course, the ability to remain in close contact with family members and dear friends with great distances of separation is a huge improvement but do these innovations just give individuals an excuse to move far from their hometown? One begins to consider rather or not in future generations anyone will stay in their hometown or will families begin to separate further and further across the globe?
Society's way of life is ever changing, innovating, demanding, and restructuring the culture of today sometimes positively and sometimes negatively. Only time will tell how far we can improve and how much we will be impacted.
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