Writing the Life of the Mind

The Internet Era

...And my parents thought that I had no social life when I was spending countless hours boarded-up inside my room on my computer.

Modern technology has allowed people to communicate with each other in a way better than any other.

Whether is it though writing notes in class or writing on a friend’s door, physical forms of communication are becoming more and more obsolete because of the technological era in which we live. Students at Case have the ability to communicate in the “virtual” world, allowing two people or a group of people to communicate without ever leaving their computers. Messages are now exchanged though Instant Messaging, text messaging, email, social websites such as Myspace and Facebook, and online gaming programs. One of the most popular online gaming programs—one used solely for social interaction and communication among students—is Second Life.

The purpose of Second Life is to replace the social interactions that take place in first life in a virtual world that people can access at from the comfort of their own homes. In Second Life, there is no reason to be at Case in order to be at Case; here’s a picture of the virtual-me standing in front of the virtual-Kelvin Smith Library:

Second Life is taken very seriously here at Case. I was offered a job position for ten dollars an hour to construct the Case campus in the virtual world, so any perspective students could “visit” the campus and see how they liked it, as well as chat with students and faculty over Second Life. This program, among others, is revolutionizing the way students at Case are communicating and writing.

Virtual communications is an immensely useful tool in writing and communication, mostly because of the speed in which the messages can be sent and read. I use text messaging and emails to talk to my parents, friends at Case, and friends from my hometown. If I were to write them messages on sheets of paper and send them in the mail, a simple conversation could take weeks, where the same conversation though email and instant messaging may take only minutes.

This technology was not widely used ten years ago. If you needed to deliver an important message to someone, and they weren’t in their dorm room, what would you do? You could leave a message on the white board hanging from the outside of their door or slide a note under their door, but they might not receive it for hours. In today’s world one could just send their friend a text message on instant message (if they were at their computer) to get a hold of them immediately.

In this day and age, the “virtual” world and the actual world are becoming the same thing when it comes to writing and communication. Communication through writing is at an all-time high, simply because of the use of technology, and in many cases it is completely replacing the traditional means of writing on paper.