Magic 8 Ball of the Psychology of the Internet

Technological determinism, the view that the availability of technology dictates our behaviour, probably wouldn't hold up very well. Technology will no doubt improve in the future and will probably make CMC come very close to FtF communication, but our interactions over CMC will still maintain a considerable distance from our FtF interactions. Even if the technology is available, people will probably still choose not to use some of it.

Visual anonymity will still remain a big part of the reason people are so attracted to the Internet. You can actively interact with other people, but they don't have to see you at the moment. Even though Social Distance Theory mostly applies to lying over CMC, it is still an indication of our comfort level over various social distances. On some days, all of us will feel both the need for company and the lack of desire to make ourselves presentable. Even more fundamentally, we rely on the lack of non-verbal cues to shield us from judgment and help us become a more ideal self (out of the four aspects of the "self). Cues Filtered Out, instead of a negative thing, will precisely be the main attraction of the Internet. It allows for the effective removal of gating features. Even with the technology available now (webcam, video conference, etc), we still choose to remain anonymous. A friend recently told me that he only uses his webcam for close friends and family. So if a chatroom requires webcam communication to make CMC closer to FtF, the chatroom will probably have a rocky future because it is ripping through most people's safety blanket of anonymity.

So a fundamental thing that will stay the same even as technology changes is people's mentality to stay behind the veil of anonymity. Even if technology allows for it, people would not want to make CMC too much like FtF. This will, to some degree, limit the market for some new technology. That's why the webcame market is not as big as one would think it should be. (Come on, long-distance visual communication? That should be a hot item straight out of a cool sci-fi movie. But it's not.)

A future issue that we may want to discuss in this class is Internet crimes. We covered a little bit of it during the Digital Deception unit. But there are so many of them out there! Why do we feel okay downloading movies and music illegally while we won't normally walk out of a store with a CD under our jackets? Does CMC actually diminish our feelings of right and wrong and confuse our moral compass? That would be a very interesting phenomenon to study.