Reflection: On The Internet By Hubert Dreyfus

Reflection After reading Hubert Dreyfus’s book “On the Internet”, I am absolutely agree with Dreyfus when he says that it will have huge consequences both for good and bad that we cannot foresee on the internet. There are so many reasons for people using the internet technology, for example the internet as a communication tool that we can communicate to people living far away from us or even we can have a video conference with them; people use internet to do research in order to gain references; the internet as a financial transaction device; as a marketing device to sell our business products; as an information tools to guide us in education; as a distance learning device; as an internet shopping; or as a sophisticated media to find a love

The internet has become a main medium for social interaction. People are sharing their daily activities, talking about their interests and also keeping in touch with family and friends through e-mail, chat rooms, instant messaging, video chat, and social media. Many people also try to have a new relationship with someone that they do not know before in order to gain information or only as an entertainment for each other. This phenomenon makes me questioning what kind of relationship formation on the internet is. When people try to have an online relationship with the great anonymity of it, there is possibility for some people to easy create closeness or intimacy. Based on The Australian Psychological Society Survey in 2010, respondents were asked about romantic relationships formed online. The findings show that those in the 31 to 50 year age group (25%) were most likely to have had a date with someone they met online and 21 percent of this group reported having formed an intimate relationship with someone they met on a social networking site (APS, 2010). The result of APS survey can be analyzed using socio-psychological theory such as social penetration theory. The theory was formulated by psychologists Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor in 1973 to provide an understanding of the process of developing deeper intimacy with another person through mutual self-other forms of vulnerability (Griffin, 2012). Altman

In this case, I would focus on how internet influences our social interaction even in our household. This phenomenon can probably bring negative impact to us for example we could miss our real social interaction or face to face life if we fall in the loneliness of the virtual relationship in the internet. Based on the research from the book says “Yet the poll also showed that “more than half [of those polled] say computers have led people to spend less time with their families and friends”. This shows, I think, that not only are we transformed by the way we use our tools; we are not aware of how we are being transformed, so we need all the more to try to make explicit what the Net is doing for us and what it is doing to us in the process” (Dreyfus, 2009). Nowadays, there are social changes on communication in the household where the new media as one of the cause of this changes. The technology inside the family tends to grow a privatization amongst family member when they increasingly using technology individually than collectively. On the other hand however, this can also mean that individuals are “distracted into the solitary world of technology, which demands their individual attention”. This can have a negative impact on social interaction within a household as well as providing individuals with the opportunity “for shared activity within the home” (McGrath, 2012). This