Social Structure - Van DIjk

Teun Van Dijk works in the fields of text linguistics, discourse analysis, and critical discourse analysis. His biggest area of contribution was to the analysis and psychology of text processing. The article bases itself around a couple of main ideas. First the main premise of the article covers the idea that infrastructure will change by influence of communication networks. He then goes into how the barriers of time and space have been broken by the transformation in the information technology of today. In addition to that he makes a point about how many people have lost the appreciation for the globalization.

I would agree that the time and space barriers have been broken however the fact that it later mentions how important time has become to our society makes me question this statement. The importance that is now placed on time really makes this statement hard to comprehend. Although everything is faster, it also makes time more important because people want things done faster and better. As far as distance I really think that it has been super helpful in terms on long distance communication. I understand the view that Van Dijk brings up about not fully understanding the special dimension anymore, however the fact that it easier to get information around the world is definitely a plus side.

There are also many points about how the telecommunication world has caused general problems for the outside world. The main points that I don’t agree with would be the specific point about how the expansion of telecommunication activity has provided for a lack of individuality and social isolation. Although the internet and other telecommunication forms do provide the basic want to have a multifunctional space they also provide for individual wants as far as what they want to do in the space. Van Dijk explains how by wanting to do everything in one space creates a homogenous set of wants and needs. But I would counter argue this by saying that many individuals want the space in order to complete very different tasks and reach different desires in the space. So although their initial wants for the space may be the same, the very use of the space to reach their goals ultimately makes it an individual process.The other larger argument Van Dijk makes that I don’t fully agree with is the social isolation that comes from the new telecommunication. I would contend that there is actually more socialization happening because of the new telecommunication technology. Although I agree that networking through telecommunication is tied to one location like he says, I would say telecommunication is how more face-to-face meetings are set up and how they happen. Being connected across long distances and erasing the extreme time and space constraints of before allow people to meet up more frequently and allow for contact to happen more easily.

Although I agree that telecommunication has caused for some downfalls in the way we communicate as a society today I will say that it enabled more that it detracted.