In The Beginning...

[furtech]

...there was Livejournal and suddenly I could stay in touch and up to date with many friends on a regular basis. This was wonderful. No more information dumps when we finally see each other in person or on the phone, with many neat details left out because they weren't important enough to remember at the time. Now I can know about the first zucchinis sprouting or a successful audition or a sad dog's day. Neat!

Then came Facebook and bullet-point posts just about everything. The posts had less elegance and heart than LJ, but still there was content.

Twitter: this made Facebook's staccato posts seem like War and Peace. Now I could "hear" half of a conversation with all kinds of friends. You know how annoying it is to overhear half of a phone conversation? With no context or explanation? Twitter.

Foursquare: I now had the ability to know exactly where my friends were, at the moment they enter a place of interest. And that's it.

Why is it that we are deluged with a tidal wave of words and instant information, but communication seems to get shallower and shallower?

I miss the days of community journals being "the thing"...Blogs and other journal sites are all right, but until someone makes a program to let you see updates of all your friends journals, blogs and posts (on, say, art sites) in one place, I think that we're worse off than before the net. The day of the hand-written, detailed letter are long-gone. It will be interesting to see how the next generation of adults communicates with each other and how narcissistic society becomes.

EDIT: I want to note that these new technologies aren't all bad-- just hindering of substantive, personal communication. I love how things like Twitter and Facebook make it easy for information to get quickly disseminated, leading to "Flash-actions" and public outcry over things like blatant lying, bullying, the military's policy on soldier mascots (basically killing them), plagiarism and art/word theft, etc. I just miss posts about cats eating a bug and then vomiting all over the new couch and stuff like that. I'm just weird, I guess.

Comments

[gilmorelion.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm still here. I refuse to go to Farcebook, and my cel phone is just a "phone". So here I stay.

I agree with you. I don't need to know everything about everyone ALL the time. I'm staying put.

[furtech.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my cell phone is basic-basic...though I just got a hand-me-down Gen-1 iPhone, so maybe I'll eventually enter the 21st Century...