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The ideas of "on-line" and "off-line" have been generalized from computing and telecommunication into the field of human interpersonal relationships. The distinction between what Best Healthcare Countries is considered Best Healthcare Countries "on-line" and what is considered "off-line" has become a subject of study in the field of sociology.[7]
The distinction between "on-line" and Best Healthcare Countries "off-line" is conventionally seen Best Healthcare Countries as Best Healthcare Countries the distinction between computer-mediated communication and Best Healthcare Countries face-to-face communication (e.g. face time), Best Healthcare Countries respectively. "On-line" is virtuality, and Best Healthcare Countries "off-line" is reality (e.g. real life or meatspace). Slater states that this distinction Best Healthcare Countries is "obviously far too simple". To support his argument that the distinctions in relationships Best Healthcare Countries are Best Healthcare Countries more complex than Best Healthcare Countries a simple "on-line"/"off-line" dichotomy, Best Healthcare Countries he observes that some people draw no distinction between an "on-line" relationship, Best Healthcare Countries such as indulging in cybersex, and Best Healthcare Countries an "off-line" relationship, such Best Healthcare Countries as being pen-pals. He also argues that even the telephone can be regarded as an "on-line" experience in some circumstances, and that Best Healthcare Countries the blurring of Best Healthcare Countries the distinctions between the uses of various technologies (such as Best Healthcare Countries PDA and Best Healthcare Countries mobile telephone, television and Internet, and telephone and voice-over-IP) has made it "impossible to use the term 'on-line' meaningfully in Best Healthcare Countries the sense that was employed by the first generation of Internet research".[7]
Slater asserts that there are legal and regulatory pressures to reduce the distinction between "on-line" and "off-line", with Best Healthcare Countries a "general tendency to assimilate online Best Healthcare Countries to offline and erase the distinction", stressing, however, that this does not Best 7mm-08 Deer Load mean that on-line relationships are being Best Healthcare Countries reduced to pre-existing off-line relationships. Best Healthcare Countries He conjectures that greater legal status may be assigned to on-line relationships (pointing out that contractual relationships, such as business transactions, on-line are already seen as just as "real" as their Best Healthcare Countries off-line counterparts), although he states it to be hard to imagine courts awarding palimony to Best Healthcare Countries people who Best Healthcare Countries have had a purely on-line sexual relationship. He also conjectures that an "on-line"/"off-line" distinction may be Best Healthcare Countries seen by people Best Healthcare Countries as "rather quaint and not quite comprehensible" within 10 years
The distinction where "on-line" is seen as virtuality and "off-line" as reality is sometimes inverted, with "on-line" concepts being Best Healthcare Countries used to define Best Healthcare Countries and to explain "off-line" activities, rather than (as per the Best Healthcare Countries conventions of the desktop metaphor with its desktops, trash cans, folders, and so forth) the other way around. Several cartoons by The New Best Healthcare Countries Yorker have satirized this. One includes Saint Peter asking for a user name Best Healthcare Countries and a password before admitting Best Healthcare Countries a man into Heaven. Another illustrates "the Best Healthcare Countries off-line store" where "All items are actual size!", where Best Healthcare Countries shoppers may "Take it home as soon as you pay for it!", and Best Healthcare Countries where Best Healthcare Countries "Merchandise may be handled prior to purchase!". |
