Online communication

By Takaaki Niikura (Nick)

Our lives have been changed completely by online communication. Workers check e-mail as soon as they get to their office, students use Messenger in their classes, and even old persons or children use e-mail or text messages to communicate with their friends. Online communications contribute to our convenient life. The greatest changes made by online communication are distance, speed, and time. Those changes are very useful, but our human lives are being stretched thin.

Before the Internet was developed, we had only mail and phone to communicate with a distant friend. The international mail took more than a week to other countries. But now we can talk or even TV phone with a web camera through the Internet for free, and e-mail can be delivered in a couple of seconds. I’m from Japan, and I’m studying abroad in the U.S now. My family and friends live in Japan, almost on the opposite side of the earth; but I can talk from my room to their cell phone, or I can get e-mail immediately. These communications make it seem as if they live very close. To communicate, the distance around the world is nothing now.

In addition, the time needed to send something has been shortened because of the speed of email. We can also chat with our friends through the Messenger as if the two of us are next to each other. However, the old snail mail is more humane. The handwriting expresses the writer’s character. The time to wait for mail from a distant friend was very exciting. Even though the use of e-mail is now widespread, e-mail can’t replace the pleasure of receiving a personal handwritten letter.

The time for communicating is also changed. Except in an emergency, we didn’t communicate with friends at midnight, but now we can send text through a cell phone. In the past, we didn’t have to care about our job while traveling, but now we might get a call from an office about our job during a trip. We are living in a world of anytime and anywhere with family, friends, or job. Those things are not separated.

The new technologies have given us many convenient communications, but old ways still have advantages. Human beings like and chase new technology; however, we are human beings, so our most important ways of communicating are talking face to face or writing by hand.