online-dating

One of the big
advancements in the acceptance of the internet I think has been the
boom of online dating
services.  When I was young and the internet
was really developing we felt that it was this amazing thing that would
just change the way we lived and make everything we do so much
easier.  Now we have seen countless news reports and special
stories about internet fraud and identity theft.  We hear
stories about online predators and about abuse on the web.  So
after our initial dive in to the electronic sea we found that there
were sharks in the water.  Since then it has been this funny
balance between people trying to put faith in this thing while others
say it is essentially flawed and needs to be recreated to prevent such
problems.  I have grown up through the entire lifetime of the
internet and it has grown and changed as I have.  Puberty was
the time of rebellion and online we had napster which labeled all of us
pirates and criminals.  Now that we have reached and age of
searching for companionship the foundation has been laid both online
and in the breakneck style of our culture for dating to
function better mediated through an online dating service

rather that the traditional styles of seek and woo.  We have
now reached an age where things function as fast as the internet will
allow and I don't know a single person who is not plugged in to the
system in some way.  Maybe that is because I myself am so
plugged in that it would be hard for me top maintain any relationships
with all of this technology now.  This dependance on
technology to regulate and support our social lives has now become our
primary mode for finding the humanity that we all need, even though it
is all around us every day but we choose to ignore that fact. 
It will be interesting to see how far this retraction in to our homes
and away from the natural, tactile world actually goes and if people as
a species will realize that this is the way it was meant to be or not.