Facebook, physical proximity in the virtual world and multilingualism in South Africa · Wednesday April 6, 2011 by Rudolf Vavruch
The effect of Facebook on daily life
As a web programmer, when a website changes or breaks or acts differently from the expected norm, depending on the situation I either feel sympathy or anger towards the developers / sysadmin / production manager etc. And hope that they will fix it soon.
I have noticed that this isn't the case for many of my friends and acquaintances who are not involved in the construction of the web. As the web opens up to more and more people it has become part of their daily lives. When a site - such as Facebook - changes or breaks - it is a 'thing' in their lives. Their day and their mood can be affected by code changes performed by someone thousands of miles away.
There is a Japanese word or phrase that describes the feeling or relationship a person has with an inanimate object. The love of a pair of shoes, an iPhone, the begrudging love of a troublesome car etc. It seems that this now includes the "virtual" world as well.
The physical location in a virtual world
When my girlfriend calls me on the telephone, she asks,"are you at the flat / work / whatever". When she starts chatting to me online she asks, "are you here?"
In a sense when speaking to her online I am speaking to her from within her Gmail, her web browser.
Someone once wrote that the reason so many ordinary people get "net rage" is because someone has dared to post something offensive directly into their sanctity of in their own private space.
Whether that is true or not, there is a perception of a person being physically closer to you when reading something from them online than is actually the case.
Multilingualism in South Africa
As a white South African I can speak English and Afrikaans more or less fluently. I cannot however speak any of the native languages. This has recently started to bother me. In effect I am a foreigner in my own home country since I cannot speak a language that 80% of the people living around me speak.
True, I doubt most Xhosa's can speak Zulu and most Zulu's can't speak Tswana, etc. But no matter where I am, I am in a language minority.
Commenting is closed for this article.