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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 is considered Best Online Keyboard "on-line" and Best Online Keyboard what is considered "off-line" has become a subject of study in the field of sociology.[7]
The distinction between "on-line" and "off-line" Best Online Keyboard is conventionally seen as Best Online Keyboard the distinction between computer-mediated communication and face-to-face communication (e.g. face time), respectively. Best Online Keyboard "On-line" is virtuality, and "off-line" is reality (e.g. Best Online Keyboard Best Mop For Tile Floors real life or meatspace). Slater states that this distinction is "obviously far too simple". To support his argument that the distinctions in relationships are more complex Best Online Keyboard than a simple "on-line"/"off-line" dichotomy, he observes that some people draw no distinction between an "on-line" relationship, such as indulging in Best Online Keyboard cybersex, and an "off-line" relationship, such as being pen-pals. He also argues that even the telephone can be regarded as an Best Online Keyboard "on-line" Best Online Keyboard experience in some circumstances, and that Best Online Keyboard the blurring of the distinctions between the uses of various technologies Best Online Keyboard (such as PDA Best Online Keyboard and mobile Best Online Keyboard telephone, television and Internet, and telephone Best Online Keyboard and Best Online Keyboard voice-over-IP) has made it "impossible to use the term 'on-line' meaningfully in Best Online Keyboard 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 a "general tendency to assimilate online to offline and erase the distinction", stressing, however, that this does not mean that on-line relationships are being reduced to pre-existing off-line relationships. He conjectures that greater legal status may be assigned to Best Online Keyboard on-line relationships (pointing out that contractual relationships, Best Online Keyboard such as business transactions, on-line are Best Online Keyboard already seen as just as "real" as their off-line counterparts), although he states it to be hard to imagine Best Online Keyboard courts Best Online Keyboard awarding palimony to people who have had a purely Best Online Keyboard on-line sexual relationship. He also conjectures that an "on-line"/"off-line" distinction may be seen by Best Online Keyboard people as "rather quaint and not quite comprehensible" Best Online Keyboard within 10 years
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