Electronic Relationships

Social networking has become something more than classmate searching, something more than friend finding, something more than chatting and finding those people with common interests. Social networking has become a way to infiltrate the business world, among other things, and a way to make multitudes of connections in almost every professional field. Social networking has become a tool to keep up with the faced paced nature of modern world.

Everyone from schools, organizations, and businesses tp activists and other groups are all in one spot, vying for a piece of the attention-pie. Advertisements and comments and updates and alerts keep the social networker in the know, keep him plugged in to the now and the important ( more likely, the deemed-important). Everything is connected, seemingly.

But are we really connected? It does seem as such, doesn't it? Long-lost friends contact one another after decades, running into each other through the "you might know this person" feature on Facebook or Myspace. Classmates keep up with each other well after high school and college friends make sure everyone made it home from the party. Your status tells everyone you got that much battled for promotion or that you finally popped the question - maybe you even asked that special someone through a comment or message (it isn't far fetched).  
And that's the thing - for all of its perks and aid to connectivity, social networking has computerized our interpersonal relationships. Can we really understand each other simply through message - do messages really convey everything we say both explicitly and implicitly?

Roommates wake in the morning, one in the kitchen, one in the bedroom. One has his laptop and the other has his iPhone - they say good morning through Facebook or Myspace chat, maybe physically interacting or speaking to one another briefly the rest of the day.

Electronic conversations are so much easier than physical, face-to-face discourse. These binary conversations allow the individuals involved more time to process information and formulate answers. In real-world interactions, conversations are fast paced and often short and usually leave only a small window for conciseness.

And it feels like people, in general, are losing, to a certain extent, real, interpersonal contact with one another. Everyone's plugged in and connected to one another through the intermediaries that are computers. A great majority of people aren't getting together and expressing their views and ideas and participating in human interaction. But, perhaps, that is an archaic form of communication - the letter, the telegraph, the telephone, the interactive group.

Of course, people get together because they have to - professors issue group work, bosses call meetings. But how often do we get together to discuss our ideas as a cohesive group, a group where body language can be read and inflection and tone can be heard?

But some would argue these points are not necessary for the growth and initiation of relationships. Some would argue that many relationships/friendships have blossomed on social networking sites and that these sites were created for that application - friend making plain and simple. And they would be right on the latter point.

But the growth of a relationship, no matter where it begins and ends, relies on interpersonal contact - individuals have to meet at some point to really know each other.

U.S History - The Marshall Plan

In 1947, the world was reeling from the devastation wrought by the Second World War. The capitals of Europe still smoldered even in the midst of reconstruction and the futures of their people swayed in limbo.

A substantial amount of the estimated 60 million WWII casualties were residents of mainland Europe. Of those who struggled through the conflict and found themselves breathing at its end found themselves in dire straits.Infrastructures lied in ruin - roads, bridges, railways, and airstrips were devastated by air strikes and demolitions leaving many villages, towns, and cities economically isolated.

By contrast, the economy of the United States found itself in the midst of an economic and consumer spending boom. Throughout the war, U.S. factories had not only supplied the United States war effort, but the war effort of its allies as well.

Post-war reconstruction frameworks were discussed at both the Yalta Conference in February 1945 and the Potsdam Conference from July 17 - August 2 1945. Only the Potsdam Conference yielded a feasible plan - the Morgenthau Plan - but by 1947, problems with the Morgenthau plan became roadblocks to progression and a new plan was adopted, one that would ultimately be of the greatest aid to the people or Europe and, especially, divided Germany.

Officially dubbed the European Recovery Program (ERP), the Marshall Plan was the blueprint of western European re-construction laid out in late 1947 by former general, then Secretary of State, George C. Marshall. The plan laid out some $13 billion to all European nations directly effected by the war - i.e. the countries devastated the most. The Marshall plan was a blue-print for true Western European reconstruction, true Western European economic revitalization and a plan that aimed to defend Western Europe from the outreached fingers of Communism.

From the late stages of the war to the time the Marshall Plan was moving into its infantile stages of implementation, the Soviets condensed the territories ceded to them by Germany into what became known as the Eastern Bloc. This area included Soviet controlled East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, other Balkan states, and countries bordering Russia-proper. This area included vast areas of Europe's most fertile land and was cut off from the Allies and Eastern Europe. Precious food supplies, along with other resources such as coal, were hidden from the Allies behind the Iron Curtain.

But aside from strictly stimulating the economies of Europe and injecting the necessary grease into the machines of industry and agriculture to supply the people of Europe with necessities, the Marshall Plan, most emphatically, stemmed the growth of communism into states beyond the Eastern Bloc.

The Marshall Plan brought about the Truman Doctrine and the ideology of containment. The Marshall Plan forced the Soviets to cordon Berlin in the Berlin Blockade and it forced the responsive Berlin Airlift that brought some 2.3 million tons of supplies into Soviet controlled Berlin. The Marshall Plan fired the first shots of the Cold War and shaped U.S. foreign policy for the next four decades. 

States Going Green

The United States, as a whole, has lagged far behind other nations in regards to global warming and taking measures to reduce emissions. Of the 141 nations bound by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the United States is not included. Mostly, the United States has left the global warming discussion in the hands of individual states, but not entirely.

There are many states which, to combat global warming, enact legislation within their borders that affects only their residents and the state itself. These regulations, such as California's A.B. 1493 and California Health and Safety Code 43018.5, routinely attempt to curb motor vehicle emissions or those being produced by power plants and other industrial businesses.

Yet these internal codes and regulations are sometimes met by corporate and, more likely, federal opposition (California, under the Clean Air Act, is allowed to impose stricter emission standards, but even California has been challenged on the forcefulness of its legislation).

"The Clean Air Act specifically prohibits a state from creating its own emission standard except that the Act does permit a state to adopt standards that are identical to California's," (Mahoney, 2006). This is curious because even California has met resistance by auto makers and the federal government when it comes to emission standards imposed by the state. Most of the standards were preempted by the federal government on grounds that the standards were found to be in contradiction to the Clean Air Act, the very Act giving California the permission to enact more stringent emission standards.  

Many states have created, and been allowed to create, internal agencies that aid in regulating greenhouse gas emission within the state. There are many differing ideas and concepts through which states go about curbing emissions and many of these agencies and their policies have not been questioned or ridiculed by the federal government. It is when states attempt to encompass bigger state emission standards, those that step on the toes of big corporations or the federal government that things becomes harried. When this happens the states appear in court. And courts favor federal agencies.

"Like a great number of environmental cases, most of the cases advanced on this issue have been dismissed due to jurisdictional problems such as political questions or standing. Other traditional problems also arise such as causation in the case of common law claims. Legal challenges against the Environmental Protection Agency and other administrative bodies have the additional challenge that courts give agencies a great deal of discretion to these entities," (Mahoney, 2006).

States have pressed for greater cooperation by the EPA on global warming. No federal statutes specifically acknowledge global warming as a problem, so these attempts are to bring greater attention to global warming through EPA regulations on emissions. "The focus of these attempts has been on reducing emissions from mobile sources through federal action," (Mahoney, 2006).


But even as these roadblocks impede state regulations on a certain level and an overall national statute on emissions, more and more states are banding together for the cause of global warming sending a message of growing concern. So far, Delaware, Hawaii, Maryland, Montana, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Wisconsin, Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, have taken to the cause.

"Despite the fact that the more aggressive measures taken by states have been impeded, the federal government will need to be accountable to its citizens," (Mahoney, 2006).

Source: Urban Lawyer; Summer2006, Vol. 38 Issue 3, p585-591, 7p