Friendship In The Shadow Of Technology By Laurence Thomas Summary
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In the essay, “Friendship in the Shadow of Technology” by Laurence Thomas the issue is has technology changed friendship in a negative fashion and the conclusion is yes, it is changed friendship in a negative way. The first reason is that technology enables people to be able to talk at any time but they can be distracted or they can arrange to talk to someone but that doesn’t allow for dialogue to flow naturally which impedes friendship’s ability to talk organically. The second reason is that the only way to get a sense of a person’s personality is through direct interaction and observing body language which isn’t possible with the technological advances. The third reason is that one of the fundamental aspects of friendship is witnessing visible emotional displays and that can’t be done using online technology.…show more content… It appears that the definition includes “friendship at its very best” (384), that they enjoy spending time together, and that they are “like another self” (384). Unfortunately, it appears that this is only the form of definition that is given in terms of what Aristotle means by companion friends. It doesn’t appear to be well defined and is an ambiguous phrase. If someone defines a companion friend as someone who is “a person employed to accompany, assist, or live with another in the capacity of a helpful friend” (the definition of companion from dictionary.reference.com) then they might have issues with Aristotle’s definition due to it being the very best of friendship and his definition of friendship says nothing about being