Sunday, August 05, 2007

Technology and Relationships

It is interesting how technology affects relationships. I ran across an article that got me thinking about this.

Can you remove you significant others ' shows without asking, if there isn't enough room for your shows? How about if you subscribe to a service like NetFlix? Who gets priority for their movies?

For example, I remember years ago, the woman I was dating liked a show that was on at the same time as a show I liked. The solution? A small TV/VCR that we had just for recording shows. As we get used to the convenience technology provides, we become a little more spoiled, I think. Instead of having to worry about TV shows airing at the same time, now what do you do about a full TiVo?

There's also the issue of things being electronically logged. If you've emailed something to someone, it's never really gone. You may have a sent mail folder, or the recipient can forward the email to someone. How about instant messaging? Some programs (such as Yahoo!) automatically log conversations. If your significant other is really paranoid, they could even use a keylogger on your computer, to record what you are doing. This happened to a friend of mine who was going through a divorce once.

As if the world needed relationships to be more complex, right?

Link to Wall Street Journal article