23 Things: #6

I've heard a lot of buzz about del.icio.us, an emerging Web 2.0 tool/site. As a conscientious objector to social networking, I find social bookmarking to also seem... uninteresting. On the one hand, knowledge is power (Thank you, Francis Bacon for a fantastic phrase!). The more sites that del.icio.us sends me to, the more knowledgeable I am. On the other hand, I am not keen on the larger, less-known world knowing which sites are "regulars" for me. One of my students raised this issue in his first class blog: the danger of expanding technology is the loss of true human contact. The generic, all-encompassing "we" would rather send a text than make a phone call. I can bookmark a page socially, rather than make direct contact with particular people.

On the other side, email could have the same fault found within it. Why call when I can email? Why write a letter when I can call? Why visit when I can write a letter? As we shrink the time it takes us to communicate across distances, are we expanding the gap between each other?

In other words, I'm not quite ready to step outside of my comfort zone and use del.icio.us. Perhaps I will try "digging" things (23 #7)... After all, my husband reads Digg.com every day and often tells me fascinating things....