The works of Driskell and Lyon, Goodspeed, and Kidder all examine the changing meaning of community during modern times and illustrate how technology is playing a major role in the formation and strength of people’s relationships. My expert question discussed the implications addressed in Driskell and Lyon’s piece of how the increase of communication through technological devices and forms of social media hinders individuals from creating the same close, personal ties with one another as they would if they communicated face to face. More specifically, I asked whether we as individuals are creating less authentic relationships nowadays due to our lack of direct communication and whether people believed that our perception of being “close” with an individual is different from what people fifty years ago valued as a “close” relationship.

Several classmates raised interesting points in regards to my question. We discussed how we cannot expect to accurately compare relationships nowadays to those of the past because of the drastic generational differences in circumstance between the two time periods. We argued that nowadays, virtual relationships can be viewed as very close and that social media and technology today allows people to remain closer with their friends and loved ones. In other words, technology is a tool that can be used to bolster already-existing and established relationships. These virtual communities provide people with an avenue to remain in contact and further their relationships through the virtual world. This being said, we also talked about how there can be discrepancies when translating virtual world relationships to real world relationships. For example, being virtual “friends” with a person on Facebook might not hold the same strength and meaning when the relationship is translated to the physical world. We also discussed how this phenomenon has taken different forms and has been repeated throughout the past few decades due to ever-improving technology. While nowadays individuals use social media to stay in touch, we considered stories that our parents had told us about how they would be given a hard time by their parents for talking on the landline when they should be forming face to face relationships instead. We then conversed about how today, younger adolescents  consider “quality” time with their friends to be sitting in the same room with one another on their phones playing games.

I found our class discussion in response to my question to be very interesting. While I understand the point that Nisbet made in Driskell and Lyon’s piece that the “decline in identification with the territorial community is related to the decline in Gemeinschaft-like interpersonal relations” (376), I also believe that my classmates made compelling points in saying that virtual relationships are one with the modern times. Driskell and Lyon also pose the question of whether the virtual community can provide common ties and social interaction without the establishment of physical place. After our class discussion, I argue that social media in itself could be considered a common place in these modern times. I believe that the “place” aspect of community is ever changing as our technology becomes more advanced.