General English Programs

Personal communication in the age of the Internet

Some people are concerned about the influence the computer has, and will have, on our daily communications. Dire pictures have been drawn of pale, overweight adolescents gazing myopically at the screen and gnawing at cold potato chips, while the rest of the world plays in the sunshine outside. The pessimists see these young people retreating into isolation, unable to communicate with people, their total lack of social skills the direct result of their mastery of the computer, which they use for games, but not for communication.

There is another, very different picture. Although there will undoubtedly be some people who cannot bear to leave the screen, the vast majority of people will use the computer as a means of communication with others. People can e-mail friends in faraway countries, and the reply can be swift and, usually succinct. In fact, the very nature of communication by e-mail is somewhat casual : Writer A sends a message of say, four paragraphs, Writer B responds paragraph by paragraph, picking out the points which seem to be important, and transmits. Writer A can quickly ensure that Writer B has understood the message. Swift, accurate communication has occurred, with a great saving of paper.

There is no checking back into old letters to see what was said in the first place, and there is little time to forget. If e-mail communication is quick convenient and casual, the chat line is quicker and wilder. This is conducted in real time, which means that people can contact each other and type messages, frequently mis-spelt in their hurry, exchanging views around the world. The language used is brief and to the point, communication of the idea being the supreme goal. There was a time when jokes travelled around the world when international telephone operators shared them during the long, boring night shifts. Those old jokes took about twelve hours to become current elsewhere. Today a joke can be in cyberspace as soon as it has been invented.

The benefits of communications through cyberspace are immense, and for some people it will break their isolation, not increase it. Consider a frail older person who finds the idea of an international flight daunting, but who has friends in another country. This person can quickly establish contact through the e-mail, and can be fully aware of her friends’ daily doings. This can be made easier as screens are enlarged and keyboards modified, but the breaking down of isolation of the old and disabled is well worth the effort to improve the machinery. We should also think of the immense value of e-mail and the Internet communication to people living in remote or isolated areas.

There is a negative side to all of this. While most people use their computers honestly, there are some who use the innate anonymity of cyberspace cruelly. These people may represent themselves as something that they are not; it can be as innocent as pretending to be one’s own sister, or as vicious as gaining the confidence of a correspondent with a view to robbing them. Confidence tricksters use computers too.

Communication through the internet is here to stay. If we are to thrive as a society we must make sure that this tool is available to as many people as possible, so that we do not develop pockets of our community who are cut off from knowledge of the net.

Questions 1-7

Match the social effect ( 1-7) with the cause ( A-E)
Write the letters A-E in boxes on your answer sheet.
N.B There may be more that one cause for a social effect.

Questions 8-12

Do the following statements AGREE with the information given in passage 1?

YES
NO
NOT GIVEN

8. Optimists think some people don’t utilize computers as a means of communications with others.

9. E-mail is a means of communication that features, swiftness, briefness, and convenience and is informal and paper saving.

10. The author prefers chat line to e-mail because it conveys information and views in real time.

11. The handicapped are not well worth human beings’ endeavour to make special efforts that will break their isolation.

12. “Pockets of our community” in the last paragraph means “ a small, isolated group”.