Explication de texte : Living in a virtual world 6470

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Living in a virtual world

Introduction

This document is an article which comes from Speakeasy and was published during the September and October of 2006. It’s entitled Living in a virtual world and was wrote by Claudia Wolosin. It deals with the arrival of the new technology in our societies. The author weigh the pros and cons of this new way of life.

In a first part, I’m going to present this new form of communication and in a second, to wonder if these changes are so positive.

I ? A new form of communication

The author starts the artical in an ironical way (quote). The 80’s can’t be considered as ?prehistoric times?. It is not that far but for those who were born with communication technology, like me, it’s hard to imagine how the life could be without it. She aims at showing how important and fast the changes have been since the 80’s thanks to the new technology.

Indeed (en effet) the high-tech has changed our lives. It is now ?vital? (l.18) and ?essential? (l.24) to us. We can’t live without them.

In lines 28 and 29, she states (déclarer) that ?we have the world at our fingertips?. It means it is very easy to get information. We can easily communicate by typing a message into our mobile or computer.

Miniaturisation made that possible. The components are getting smaller and smaller. Today the mp3 and cellphones are so small that you can take them everywhere.

However the journalist underlines an important fact, we communicate more frequently but remotely (plus éloigné). We use the technologies to communicate but we no longer hve real conversations face to face (l.47).

This new form of communication isolates us from the others (l.57 ?secluded world?) and it also reduces the expression of our emotions to a fex signs on a screen (the emotic symbols). This is exactly what the photo shows : an isolated man, alone in the dark in front of his computer and expressionless.

II ? A change for better or for worse ?

The author lists the problems brought by modern technologies : online pornography (l.64), addiction (we can’t live without it l.18-54), seclusion/isolation (l.57), plagiarism (l.80) and lies because peoples often believe everythings they see on the Internet.

When the author talks about the blogs, she says that even if it’s a convenient way to share informations with friends or family, it’s also a distant form of communication. Moreover, it can be dangerous to have personal informations spread on the net (l.72 to 78).

As for the Internet, she says that even if it is a fantastic source of information, nothing is controlled so there is wrong information as well (l.94 to 96).

But as a conclusion, the journalist says that Cyberspace is not better than the real world, it reflects it, it has it’s good sides and it’s bad sides.