Is the nature of reading and communication in the Internet age changing the quality of human interaction and language?

Dave Pollard asks this question after quoting another commentators reflections on the way that online experience affects the nature of offline social behaviour. Online, we scan, jumping from one location to another looking for content that has value to us. We are faced with so much content, most of which is irrelevant to us, that we learn the art of instant dismissal. Pages that flash before us must be compelling in order for us to dig deeper. It is all too easy to be attracted only to the kind of content that at a surface glance fits our tastes.

But does this really change the way we interact with people "offline"?

("Offline", what a strange way of talking about flesh and blood, face to face social intercourse!) Ever since we have lived in cities we have not found it possible to personally know every individual we pass in the street. It is actually one of the things I like about living in a city and why I choose not to live in a village! Martin Buber coined the term "I-Thou" to refer to those one on one personal relationships that give place to the subjectivity of another being. We can't handle this kind of intersubjectivity with too many people, it is potentially threatening, and it is certainly disruptive of the way we like to think. It often creates some of that uncomfortable cognitive dissonance that forces us to reevaluate the way we think.

Most of the time we do not deal with others in this intensely personal way, as subjects with whom we truly engage. But nor, if we are to be civil, do we treat others as objects. Harvey Cox who wrote the Secular City argued that there was another way of relating to others characteristic of city life that was neither the very personal I-Thou nor the impersonal I-It. Cox suggests that the I-Thou relationship is essentially pre-urban. For urban people it is just not possible to restrict our relationships to those people with whom we can enjoy "small-town intimacy". It is in fact by being anonymous to most people that it is possible to have "a face and a name for others". For the universe of relationships that make up urban life and give it its flavour, Cox suggests instead the term "I-You". These are the public relationships enjoyed in the city but precluded from our private lives.

To limit and filter the set of I-Thou relationships is necessary for us to survive, there is only so much otherness that we can deal with. We all need to belong to a tribe with recognisable boundaries and some shared values. Primitive tribes drew geographical boundaries within which there was a network of social relationships held together by some set of shared values and interests. Ever since the development of modern transport and telecommunications we have been evolving into a global city that is multicultural and multitribal in which geographical boundaries are no longer meaningful. The new networks of social relationships are defined in cyberspace, which includes telephone and other telecommunication channels. This means that the communities to which we really belong occupy the same space and time as all other communities, however loosely defined.

What I want to suggest is that the shortened attention span that we give to others whilst we look for those with whom we can relate is a consequence of living in the city rather than something peculiar to increased use of the internet. The internet simply makes us more effective in building social networks with those with whom we share common interests and values.This includes both those with whom we feel comfortable, and those that are a challenge to our thinking and being. Perhaps it is a sign of the success of a networked society that we grow less patient of the superficial relationships that are neither deep nor disturbing.