Copyright Ian Pearson, BT Futurologist

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Future friendships

David Greenop suggests that families are breaking down in favour of the individual etc. While I agree broadly with David on most of his work, it is more fun playing devil's advocate, and a case can certainly be put.

While there are some pressures in this direction, there are also many other pressures on individuals to behave in a wide variety of ways. The future will surely be a hotchpotch of people exhibiting the results of some or all of these pressures. Just as it is now, and probably always has been. I hate to agree with Margaret Thatcher, but she may be right saying there is no such thing as society. Maybe it is just a collection of individuals doing different things, some of whom choose to have allegiances to various groups, including the family. Some even have an allegiance to what they consider as the community, though many or most other people don't care tuppence about 'the community'.

The breakdown of the family is not compulsory. Indeed, with telecomms and easy travel, it is as easy to stay in touch as it has always been. Maybe it is just that people are recognising that they have a choice of friends though they can't choose their family, and due to wider support bases, now have the independence to ignore their family in favour of their friends.

With the internet and later the superhighway, we will see these friends coming from wider and wider bases. Geography will cease to be a determinant when we have high quality visual communications at low cost. We will form new allegiances, new friends. Given access to millions or billions of people to choose friends from instead of the few thousand that we meet physically in school, university, work, church and the pub. We may have two opposing pressures. The first may be to more transient, shallower and shorter lived friendships. The other based on finding much more compatible friends more easily, may be to much more intense friendships with a few very close friends (again from anywhere).