You know what's funny about this thread? No one bothered to look up the source site of the article-Cracked.com. An article from a humor site used as a discussion topic.

Technology doesn't make people miserable. People make other people miserable. Technology is just a tool. In this case, a means to reach out to other people whose main purpose in life is to inflate themselves by making other look bad. Those people are already out there before the internet even existed. Like in real life, you can avoid them if you choose to.

Whether you choose to wither away at the keyboard or do some healthy exercise has nothing to with technology. It is a decision that you make. Technology is just an additional option in your life. Like every choice you make, you will need to face the consequence of that decision.

See the problem with discussing an article which is based on opinion. Everyone has an opinion which may or may not coincide with yours. How does one tell which opinion is more "correct" than another? You don't.

Mind explaining "confrontational interaction endeavors"? I never come encountered this particular phrase before.

It's your words and you can't explain what it means?

"confrontational interaction" definitely means arguing, the endeavor part is what I don't understand. The endeavor part make it sounds like your are actively pursuing arguments with others.

And yet you have not explained the phrase that you have given. Words have many meanings. The meaning changes depending on the other words that it is put together with.

I have yet to encounter anyone using confrontation to represent a peaceful encounter. A confrontation is a type of interaction so interaction in this phrase is redundant. Using the definition for endeavor that you have provided, the only interpretation that I can come up with is actively looking for a fight. Is this what you are trying to say? If not, can you come up with a simple explanation on what it means?

Confrontation is a type of interaction. I didn't say all interactions are confrontational, it is a type of interaction. Appeasement is a type of interaction. It's like saying an apple is the same as an orange because they're both fruits.

Attempts of confrontational communication still sounds like deliberate attempts of pissing people off. Confrontations tends to have a negative connotation.

Maybe the term you were looking for is socializing?

This post has been edited by Eventless: Nov 18 2009, 04:36 PM

So are you trying to ask whether technology is the cause of real life conversations becoming less common or that real life conversations skills are being stunted because of technology?

There's 2 questions in there, which question are you referring to?

Real life communications are becoming less common because it is not really that convenient. Both parties has to be available at the same time. If you exclude telephones usage, both parties would need to be in the same location as well requiring time to be wasted on traveling. With technologies like telephone, you don't have to be in the same located. With email and instant messaging, both parties don't even have to online at the same time. They may not talk directly but the message is still getting across.

The question is why is having face to face conversation so important?

I'm not saying that technology should be used in all cases but asking what makes one form of communication is more superior than others as implied by Deadlocks' questions. The act of communicating through a phone does not make a person less real. There's still a person at the other end.

In your first example, technology is still not substituting a person. Substituting means that there's no real person on the other end of the conversation. You would be communicating to a machine instead of a person. Dating sims would be an example of such interaction if the player is treating the characters in the game as a real person. In such a case, is it the fault of the game or the fault of the player that such a situation exists?

Somehow you are misinterpreting the question that was asked. I'm not asking who would come up with. I'm asking why would such a product exist in the first place. Technology doesn't just pop into existence by itself, the need for it have to be present before someone would start working on it. So who's fault is it that such things exists in the first place?

It has been mentioned multiple times in this thread, the one that chooses to use a particular technology is the user. There is nothing to prevent you from not using technology. It is your choice and you'll have to live with the consequences of making that choice. Want to use electricity, you are gonna need to create some pollution as a result. Want to use clean energy, you will have to pay more for it.

The example of the movie Wall-E is more about what happens when big business make the decisions in your life. Specifically making you buy and use technology that is not needed. Thinking for yourself is no longer "cool" so we follow what we are told without question due to fear of becoming the odd one out.