JMCQ

Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age. Michael Bugeja. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 226 pp. $49.00 hbk.

     For some time scholars have examined the impact of media on our society, including their positive and negative influences on civic engagement. Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age explores technology's influence on our nation from an approach that draws from a variety of perspectives, including ethical, historical, cultural, and sociological.
     Michael Bugeja, director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University, begins Interpersonal Divide with a simple postulation "that media and technology are affecting millions in similar, negative ways." Drawing from the example set by Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Bugeja looks for signs of these negative effects in a variety of community and personal activities.
     Throughout Interpersonal Divide Bugeja draws connections between the increasing role of media technology in our lives and the personal and social issues facing society. According to Bugeja, new media technologies have eroded our understanding of place and identity, replaced our moral consciousness with the teachings of self-help manuals, associated citizenship with consumerism, weakened our interpersonal skills, and destroyed our perception of community. In a world where people chose to talk on their cell phones rather than converse with the person with whom they are eating dinner, Interpersonal Divide demands that readers reassess how they use media and technology and calls on them to use these resources to build, rather than replace, local communities.
   Written for a general audience, the strength of Interpersonal Divide lies in its clear and accessible writing style. An easy and enjoyable read, the book clearly raises some important and thought-provoking questions about how we use media and technology. For instance, "are we using media and technology to enrich our lives and reaffirm our values, or are media and technology using us to program our lives and influence our values?" While Bugeja provides answers to many of his own questions, he also asks readers to stop and observe their own interactions with media and technology through journal exercises. In doing so, Bugeja demands readers take an active part in the examination and create some of their own answers.
     Another strength of the work relates to Bugeja's willingness to challenge existing media theories and present new approaches for studying technology. While many see Marshall McLuhan as a visionary scholar, Bugeja challenges many of his media and technology theories. Bugeja attacks McLuhan's biological approach to media, revealing "McLuhan's mistake was to focus on humans as information systems rather than on humans in information space." Instead, Bugeja calls for a physics approach that explores how media place an individual in multiple places at one time.
     Although Bugeja's decision to write for a general audience serves as a strength, it also presents several weaknesses. Bugeja purposefully avoids lengthy discussions of theory or scientific research and limits the use of citations, making it unclear, at times, if some of his arguments are the result of scientific research or his personal opinion. Additionally, Bugeja largely overlooks research on how communication technologies, particularly the Internet, have been used to construct communities, both virtual and local. He also fails to address the growing body of research exploring how people use communication technology to build interpersonal relationships.
     Finally, Bugeja's assertions are largely based on the assumption that relationships, actions, and communities in the physical world are authentic while those in the virtual world are false. As such, Bugeja dismisses the negative influences of face-to-face interpersonal communication as "not the issue," while he continually underlines the potentially destructive nature of technology-mediated interpersonal communication.
     Overall, Interpersonal Divide is an enjoyable and thought-provoking read. The combination of its accessible writing style and the inclusion of journal exercises, discussion ideas, and suggested readings make the book a good candidate for inclusion in an upper-class or graduate-level seminar. Bugeja leaves the reader with quite a bit to think about and to investigate further.