Individual, Family and Society in the Internet Age

Information and informatics technologies have been changing rapidly. Technologies whose rate of change is increasing exponentially always cause the encounter of the institutions giving education at this area with serious problems about actuality. Especially, application-related technologies have become out of date very quickly and out of use. This situation makes the continuing adaptation of the academy to technology mandatory. Studies made on information technologies have been becoming old quickly, so their life is quite short. The same situation is valid for handling social issues within the basis of the Internet. Obviously, new studies and up-to-date findings are needed according to the constantly changing conditions on the Internet and family. Many of what has been said today about the Internet, individuals, and society would become old for the next months. However, the thing that has not changed is not taking apart the structure of family or society from their past. Technology should be considered a mean, and a using method regarding the facilitator function of it in life must be constructed. In his book Extensions of Man, Marshall McLuhan asserts that every technology is an extension of skill and a basic sense organ. Because every technology is an extension of an organ, a sense organ (hand, eye, ear, skin, etc.), each new technology also reshapes these inter-sensory balances. McLuhan defended that by the electronic revolution, the extension of the brain, which is the most basic organ of humans, appeared for the first time in history. This thesis is in a position that explains the rationale of the changing power of technology on entire human and environmental conditions from the bottom to the top. Due to the developments, the order based on written culture and eye-centered background are now over and by the computer technology, the technology in which the sense of the sight of the eye was dominant has been abandoned, and a new universe, where the balance among our emotions have been re-constructing by the computers, has been entered. In this new universe, technology has started to prepare for the end of society and change the roles inside a family. The academy must find a compromise between these technologies and institutions.