Richard K. Smith quoted in Vancouver Sun

Yesterday, my senior supervising professor Richard Smith (frequently sought out as the local authority on all that is Technology and Society) was interviewed about his opinion regarding the latest StatsCan study regarding heavy Internet users. Some of his thoughts are in today's Vancouver Sun.

Smith, a professor with Simon Fraser University's School of Communication, said he's not convinced heavy Internet use has a negative effect on family life. What it is doing is changing the way people communicate and interact. That, in itself, is not a bad thing, he said.

Inventions come along that displace things that people are used to doing, Smith said, citing the telephone as an example.

"Go back a hundred years, when people suddenly had the availability of this new technology called a telephone. People started chit-chatting on the phone when it used to be normal to go to each other's home," he said. "And yet now we think of picking up the phone and talking to one another as completely normal.

"In fact, a lot of what is compelling about the Internet is not that it is you and the computer, it is you and other person you are interacting with through the computer."

Read the whole story here>>