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.

[beetlecat.livejournal.com]

I really like Twitter but, yeah, it *has* led me to not post in LJ nearly as much. On the other hand, everyone *else* is off on twitter or facebook and when I do post I don't seem to get much interest.

Or maybe I just don't write about interesting things anymore.. I dunno.. I mean I used to write a lot about stupid neighbours or dog stuff or the like. But my life has moved on past that to be more sedate/busy with work.. boring stuff. Or stuff that I simply do not want to share with the world now that I can bounce it off one or two friends via AIM or texting instead.. or by talking to one of my roommates.

[ruggels.livejournal.com]

I just have myu LOJ post to Facebook notes. The problem with Twitter and facebook, is that they demand a near constant connection and that's just far too expensive for mke to maintain. As such I stay at the slower pace.

Still I much prefer the longer articles to the "I just took a dump, and it was all smooth anc curly" Twitter type mesages, but the fact they are using it to pass link to longer articles makes it useful. Just not for me.

Scott

[rcking]

I also agree with this - Partly because I dislike the attention deficit nature of the new media, and partly because the new media tend to have a lousy history. If I'm away from LJ for a week, I can go back and read the last week of postings. Or I can go back months or years in a persons journal to find a cool post I remember they made. Somehow, the new media make that sort of thing much harder. They assume that anything older than 24 hours is no longer interesting...

[okojosan.livejournal.com]

I haven't really logged into Facebook since May... I hate how the content moves so fast you have to check it several times a day. I also hate that you can't organize friends lists to read different groups of friends (I tried doing this and it didn't work). I'd like to read my school friends, then my "real" friends, and so forth, but I can't figure out how to do that. Very irritating.

So... I like LJ/Dreamwidth, though it seems quieter and quieter lately. :/

[bladespark.livejournal.com]

Facebook is a cancer. :P Twitter is okay, but I never use it. And rarely when I do I get no response. That's what really bugs me about it. Most lj posts get at least one comment in reply. Twitter... resounding silence. Nothing. Never used any of those other things, they don't interest me at all, for much the same reason, they're not set up for interactions, they're just set up for you to talk to people, without engaging in actual dialogue.

[octantis.livejournal.com]

On top of all this, I don't trust Facebook. They control a lot of what happens to the stuff you put up on there, and they seem to play pretty fast and loose with it.

[nerfcoyote.livejournal.com]

I saw "The Social Network" in theaters. I still don't have an actual facebook account. Tho I still have a MySpace, I rarely check it. Seems the same 3-4 people KEEP trying to add me there. Hah!

But yeah, I shared my EF travelogue tweets on LJ since they were daily captures of as-they-happened activities. That's what I wanted Twitter for originally.

[diadexxus.livejournal.com]

I still use LJ most days, along with Twitter :)

-J

[doronjosama.livejournal.com]

I read LJ every day, but I post mostly through Twitter (which is set to feed to both my Facebook and my LJ). I'm working so much, I just have no time for LJ posting. I miss the free time I used to have, but work must be done.

I still post on LJ when I can or when something really big happens.

[fenris-lorsrai.livejournal.com]

Ironically the post above this on my friends list is about someone's cat vomitting on the bed for attention. Clearly someone still uses LJ for amusingly awful pet anecdotes!

[pikacello.livejournal.com]

YEAH EL JAY!!!!!!

[pikacello.livejournal.com]

Oh Lance, by the way, did you read this?
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-12/tech/twitter.viral.campaign.airport.bomb_1_tweet-court-fines-appeal?_s=PM:TECH

I don't know my stance anymore!

[shoka.livejournal.com]

You can us a rss reader to aggregate most blogs, journals, some art sites.

The new communication methods are largely still what you choose to make of them. I don't do Facebook at all, but I'll read Twitter feeds of close friends as well as their blogs. FourSquare I see little point in, but I know folks who use it to keep track of folks they're meeting up with, but don't use it much otherwise.

[thornwolf.livejournal.com]

Totally irrelevant to the topic, I apologize, but speaking of getting ahold of someone this is my best option outside of email. I wanted to drop you a line and say the NicNacs were indeed, addictive, and Skorzy and I borked them down pretty fast, just thought you'd like to know XD Thank you so much for that inclusion!

And you're on my list of art to get to when I get back from MFF, so, hope you don't feel forgotten :3 MFF has eaten my life atm.

[kvogel.livejournal.com]

I use facebook, but am very selective about freinds, so other than a few duplicates of LJ people, the only additions are a few who don't use LJ.
The net result is that my circle of contacts, aside from a few family members, is about everyone I want to keep in touch with, to greater or lesser extent, anyway. I don't have an awfully lot of content issues, though FB does disappoint for traffic history, and several of its features don't work for me.
Limited expectations, limited disappointments.

Preach it, brother...

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

...not to mention all the journaling on F.A. ... Now as you have noted, journaling is GOOD, but there are so many more features here for journaling.. privacy levels, friend's list aggregation, multiple icons, etc... I guess a lot of people feel traffic beats all of those, ...but who really knows why.... *scratches head*

As a permanent account holder, I dunno when or if this does become a desert... but I'll miss it. Already missing it a bit now.
When I had 60 friends I used go through at least 80 friend's list postings a day... now even with over 200, it's gradually trickled down to around 30 postings a day :/

...I still don't go to Twit or Fbook that often even so... I have been going to YouTube and art sites and second life.
Like you were saying, Fbook and Twit just leaves me feeling pretty empty.

[tori04.livejournal.com]

http://www.google.com/googlereader/tour.html

Good for keeping track of lots of different public blogs, art sites, comics, etc.

It doesn't read FO LJ posts though, or other things where you have to be logged in to see.

[jonnywoof.livejournal.com]

I had a Twitter account for a few months, then I canceled it. I quickly grew tired of the A.D.D. diarrhea.

At least in LJ you feel like you have more of an "A and B conversation". You post something, you get a reply.

[spunkywulf.livejournal.com]

My thoughts exactly, 110%. Thanks for laying it out in such a wonderful way. And like you said... the new tech. isn't bad, but it's purely Instant Gratification, which is good for quick quips, but there's just no heart in anything anymore. I miss when people wrote about THEM, and I could peek into their little world and meet them, get to know them. Know who they are :) And that reminds me that I should post more.

I miss you already, you were wonderful to see, if only for so fleeting a few minutes that weekend!