<Author>EN</Author>
<Nationality>British</Nationality>
<Gender>Male</Gender>
<Age>31</Age>
<First language>English</First language>
<Other foreign languages in decreasing order of proficiency>French</Other foreign languages in decreasing order of proficiency>
<Last degree>MA</Last degree>
<Years of staying in China>NA</Years of staying in China>
<Topic>3</Topic>
Recent decades have witnessed dramatic advances in information technology that have come to revolutionise how we interact with each other and the level to which we are able to maintain relationships in absentia. The development of the mobile telephone and the internet, both of which became commercially available en masse through the 1990s, the subsequent growth of instant messaging, social networking, micro-blogging, as well as the added effect of these services becoming accessible via a new age of mobile devices such as the iphone, have meant for the first time people can easily stay in touch at all times regardless of distance and location. With such a profusion of communication technologies, and our increasing reliance on them, we may sometimes wonder if life was perhaps better when technology was simpler.
All too often today we find ourselves camped out in front of our computers checking the latest Facebook or RenRen posts, sending or reading tweets, chatting away to countless acquaintances on QQ; essentially keeping tabs on a virtual, semi-existent world when we would probably be far better off going out to participate in real life activities with real people. Is there not a real danger of losing sight of what is important in life? With this unlimited level of connectivity the internet offers people all over the world, there is a growing tendency for us not to concentrate on the here and now, but the where and the when? Indeed, when we do manage to get out to the bar, cafe or restaurant we are we even safe then? Witness the number of tables you see these days with people happily submerged, intensively interacting with their mobile telephones, oblivious of the very people around them they have come out to meet. There may well be a disturbing tendency for us to go in search of an ever increasing number of virtual relationships and neglect the true, real friends that we do have.
If this is so, we may well consider that life and human interactions were simpler in the past. In todays world are we not all too often too caught up in this barrage of information to have time for proper conversation? What is more, is this kind of behavior not likely to be detrimental to the development of us as human beings? It seems pretty unlikely that any significant proportion of these vast quantities of friendships we foster can truly be fruitful and meaningful, and this combined with the concurrent neglect of people around us is only likely to result in disappointment in our relationships and subsequently in ourselves. We cannot possibly know the many acquaintances we keep these days on a similar level to the traditional local forms of friendship of yesteryear. Thus, this increasing reliance on an expanding number of shallow, virtual friendships is more likely to lead to disillusionment. There may also be a growing tendency towards vulnerability and of people being taken advantage of as they go in search of these types of relationships and this disappointment may then lead to people becoming increasing withdrawn and alienated from society. 
Clearly, if we are not careful to realise the limitations of this information revolution, and to manage its effects, it is possible that the vast communication explosion unleashed by these new technologies may only lead to an increasingly alienated, polarised and selfish society. While we need to recognise the great benefits these technologies have brought to us in allowing us to maintain our relationships wherever we may be in the world, we need to stand back, take note, and make sure that they are put to good use; that we use them to maintain and expand our existing relationships, ferment new and meaningful ones, and not simply to go in search of some kind of nonexistent virtual non-existent world, where we are all set to be loved and idolized by all, but ultimately to end up disappointed. We need to be sure we use them to promote good relations, not just the interests of the individual.