Comments on: Facebook: A News Site http://www.bivingsreport.com/2007/facebook-a-news-site/ Wed, 01 Feb 2012 22:15:29 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 By: Robert Ivan http://www.bivingsreport.com/2007/facebook-a-news-site/comment-page-1/#comment-224375 Robert Ivan Tue, 26 Jun 2007 09:49:31 +0000 http://www.bivingsreport.com/2007/facebook-a-news-site/#comment-224375 This exchange made me think of this passage from Walden by Henry David Thoreau, "we are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate... We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that Princess Aderaide has the whooping cough." In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman cites this passage and comments, "Thoreau, it turns out, was precisely correct. He grasped that the telegraph would create its own definition of discourse; that it would not only permit but insist upon a conversation between Maine and Texas; and that it would require the content of that conversation to be different from what Typographic Man was accustomed to." Social networking sites insist upon a conversation between users. By definition they exist through interaction, no matter what that interaction may consist of. I recommend the Neil Postman book by the way. This exchange made me think of this passage from Walden by Henry David Thoreau, “we are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate… We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the old world some weeks nearer to the new; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad flapping American ear will be that Princess Aderaide has the whooping cough.”

In his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman cites this passage and comments, “Thoreau, it turns out, was precisely correct. He grasped that the telegraph would create its own definition of discourse; that it would not only permit but insist upon a conversation between Maine and Texas; and that it would require the content of that conversation to be different from what Typographic Man was accustomed to.”

Social networking sites insist upon a conversation between users. By definition they exist through interaction, no matter what that interaction may consist of.

I recommend the Neil Postman book by the way.

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