The environment in which we can communicate has extended with the use of online digital social environments. They are additional to the day to day conversations that are bound in the physical world. But normal day to day conversations use forms of communication that have developed over thousands of years and that is full of subtleties. Now, online social environments try to extend that communication.  We now communicate online in chats, forums, social networking and what not. However, what is the social expressiveness in an online environment? Not much. We now have a set of smilies that give some expression to what we mean and how we like to be perceived, but the pallet of communicational emotions is very limited. In my opinion only four or five of these smiley’s are well captured expressions or emotions. The rest is entertainment. With people getting more and more used to online communication, how does this affect that way we communicate and what we perceive as nomal.

Most social environments are created by engineers and graphics designer. I think hardly ever a sociologist or psychologist is involved in creating a social environment. And that I find rather particular. With today’s community creation being the talk of the town, I would of liked to see some development in the social aspect of creating a community, rather than the graphics and feature galore. I wonder especially whether the Digital Natives that spend a considerable amount of time online in a social settings, would the language and expressiveness used online change the way we communicate profoundly.