Bowling Alone
Miscellaneous stuff:
Here are some references on MiniDisc (written as I sit playing with MP3s…oh well):
Judy Obee posted some interesting mail to the sd-callers list today, quoting a review of Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam from a review in the National Post by Jonathan Kay:
Bowling is the most popular competitive sport in the United States. It
is also a metaphor for the ebbing of America’s collective social life.
While the total number of bowlers in the U.S. increased by 10% between
1980 and 1993, the number of league bowlers decreased by more than 40%
during the same period. And even among league bowlers, social
interaction has become less meaningful.“…mounted above each lane is a giant television screen… Even on a
full night of league play, team members are no longer in lively
conversation with one another about the day’s events…. Instead, each
stares silently at the screen while awaiting his or her turn. Even
while bowling together, they are watching alone.”But this isn’t a book about bowling. The withdrawal Putnam describes
applies to everything Americans do together, including church, club
meetings, card games, volunteering and dinner parties. The author sees
the steady drop in these activities over the past four decades as
evidence of a decrease in American “social capital”, an essential asset,
he argues, that helps lower crime, improve school performance and
stimulate the economy.What has caused the drop in social capital? Putnam dismisses many of
the obvious suspects. The decline in free time, for instance, is not
implicated – because there hasn’t actually been a decline in free time.
As Putnam demonstrates, the average amount of labour workers perform in
the United States has remained roughly constant since the Second World
War.Other obvious suspects, such as mobility, urbanization, divorce and
two-career families, also haven’t played a large role. Neither has the
Internet: The wired are statistically indistinguishable from the
non-wired when it comes to civic engagement.What does affect social capital is a much older technology:
television. Americans watch an average of four hours per day and,
according to Putnam’s math, each of those hours produces a 10% reduction
in civic activism. In surveys, people who report that TV is their
“primary form of entertainment” volunteer less often, spend less time
with friends, give less blood, are less interested in politics and
express more road rage than their demographically matched equivalents
who report that TV is not their primary entertainment activity.Time, like social capital, is a scarce asset. And the fact Americans
are spending more of it alone says something about the diminishing
economic returns that come from schmoozing.
This was interesting to me, so I went searching for more stuff on this book:
Besides the main site, there’s also The BetterTogether Story Collector, a site “to provide interactive opportunities to celebrate the new and better ways that Americans are connecting, and provide tools that make it easier for them to do so.”
You can read the book jacket and Chapter 1