E-ttenuation

The destructive effect of technology on relationships.

Writing for The Guardian, Madeleine Bunting commented on what may have caused apparent changes to “the durability and quality of human relationships”:

The most obvious driver of change is new media technology, which is dramatically re-shaping all kinds of human interaction. Raymond Tallis has coined the word the “e-ttenuation” of relationships to describe the consequences: faced with such an abundance of interesting choices, there is a reluctance to commit and a provisionalism which promotes grazing, keeping options open. Above all, there is a paradigm of contractualism: relationships are measured by the question “what’s in it for me?” It is not technology per se at fault, but how it is used, and in particular how it combines with another equally powerful phenomenon – commercialisation; the assessment that everyone and everything has a price. It is the two combined which I would argue are so corrosive to our capabilities to create and sustain relationships of depth and durability.

In a recent article for The Times of London Raymond Tallis argued:

Genuine friendship, as Aristotle said, is based on goodness rather than utility. And he would, I am sure, have had a dim view of those newer modes of friendship that seem to have partly displaced the old: the e-friendships that we may cultivate in the illusion that, even if we are unloved close up, we may be appreciated for our true value at a distance. The multiplication of the people we interact with through various electronic media – the imaginary friendships we have with our idols, the contacts that are twittered into being or fostered on Facebook or in chat rooms – may delude us into thinking that we are more wired into the lives of others and others are more wired into ours than is the case. Screen-mates, alas, are remote from the real mess of the real world in which real friendships are formed and tested and deepened.

They are simply part of the e-ttenuation of our lives. True friendships include availability at awkward hours and open-ended commitments that are alien to a society based upon contract.