It is in my experience. Try dating outside of an app. It's pretty amazing the social changes that I believe are a result of being able to date almost exclusively through an app. Friends of mine mention that people don't ask people out in person anymore. One friend came back from France and was amazed to have people ask her out in person. She said it felt almost shocking and archaic. So, yes, computers are changing our social character, and likely our personal character as a result of their increasing presence in our lives.
Computers aren't so much changing who we are, rather they ate allowing people to expose their unmasked selves. With computers there is no longer the need to wear a social mask. You don't have to pretend.
That's to say the nice gal at the office who when she plays video games plays a sadistic character, that character is closer to her unfiltered self. So she is less the agreeable helpful persona --that's the role she puts on in society-- due to norms and expectations, and is more that violent persona. And that violent persona is not so much a reaction to balance her social mask, but more the "real" self. We can imagine why societies evolved to manage the true selves in ways that seem hypocritical.
One of the best books to make me realise this was Accelerando, by Charles Stross. The chips were inside her head, but, you know, accessible through typing and inside your head is just a difference in degree.
I'm a believer in the William Golding (Lord of the Flies) view of humanity - that the baseline character of humans is quite different than what you see in modern humanity and that what makes us who we are comes from social controls and not instinct.
IOW, human character is malleable and constantly changing. It's not surprising that something as significant as the Internet (not computers on their own) is changing us again.
I think our human nature is more a function of scarcity than anything else. If you look at Colin Turnbull's work comparing the Pygmy tribes to the Ik tribes, it's pretty evident that under harsh conditions people are more ruthless and selfish then under conditions of relative plenty.
I like to also compare the Old Testament from Deutoronomy onward and Gilgamesh. In Gilgamesh, which is a much older book, the world is vast, lonely and mysterious and man's primary struggle is with the forces of nature. In the Old Testament, the world is crowded and the the story line is dominated by near constant never-ending warfare.
My question in response is, "is that qualitative difference also qualitative?" I'm starting to think I agree, as long as you extend "scarcity" and "harshness" beyond the purely economic.
Otherwise how do you explain what appears to be the majority of modern jihadists coming from at least the upper 1/2 of society, if not solidly middle class or above, e.g. the 9/11 hijackers?
Of course, your thesis doesn't have to explain all examples of being "rutheless".
As for your last point, hmmm. Is that in part a function of viewpoint, of e.g. the author(s) and audience(s)?
ADDED: other counterexamples: The Japanese in WWII, the actions of some high caste Indians towards lower caste ones. (As a matter of fact, in India in the last few decades, while incomes have gone up, calories and quality of them has gone down for those lower on the socioeconomic scale...).
And with the new technologies we risk letting out our brutal unconscious tendencies again. Violence in form of cyberbullying. Selfishness in form of narcissistic social networks. And more problematic, having groups with extremist anti-social attitudes reach critical mass.
I agree about letting our brutal tendencies out.
I don't agree with the redefinition of violence from physical harm to include cyberbullying. Bullying is correlated with acts of violence, but violence and bullying are different things.
I think our in-group out-group behavior and all the brutal tendencies stem from our very evolution. Macques do the same thing ( http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2011-01598-001/ ).
That being said I also don't think any group has an extremist anti-social attitude. It seems like an paradox, how do people who are extremely anti-social form a group, wouldn't they just be bunch of isolated loners ? I think are simply extremist towards people they see as the "other" or outside their group.
