littera enim occidit

theironlion:

The power of networking is nothing to be taken lightly. The information age definitely has lubricated the networking process simply by making individuals more available. I believe each network has its place but no network has managed to do what facebook has in the last ten years.

I’ve had some very intriguing philosophical conversations on facebook.  is tumblr not really interacting because we aren’t doing it in person?  what about snail-mail letters?  interaction via new media isn’t necessarily any less real than before.  maybe the ease of use puts people off (as ever, we’re inclined to assign value to things through their relative scarcity…if communication is suddenly cheap, it’s less valuable), but that doesn’t mean what’s happening is automatically inferior to its analog equivalent.

I’ve assumed that insistence on old fashioned methods of communication was a technophobic thing, or some function of resistance to change, but I wonder how much of it may actually be related to the abundance = devaluation thing?