I see the point of the original post, but I disagree. Granted, as most do, that nothing can truly replace face-to-face, saying that technology forcibly determines its own use is an oversimplification - however much the media may be the message.
On the one hand, the public media space has always been a venue for "serious" discourse, and even for serious emotion (think of the many printed and radio memorials to Updike recently). On the other, the fact that social tech mediates through a largely textual interface does nothing to diminish the fact that, pre-phone especially and pre-web at least, letter writing was used for both very serious and frivolous purposes. Last year, a childhood friend of mine died - after almost a month in a coma - from a brain aneurysm. While she was in an uncertain state, there was a Facebook group, but also a - admittedly semi-private - group on the site Carepages.com. On Carepages, her family let out regular updates, people shared memories and commiserated on forums, and then, ultimately, grieved briefly together. As one of my friends put it, "It's like the entire town was in her waiting room," that town including friends dispersed on both coasts. I am sure that this helped those who were too far from the town to come for the funeral come to terms with the support of a larger group - the mediation notwithstanding. Life-changing matters will certainly always have a more face-to-face component, because it is at those times that things like twitter or FB can seem most "frivolous". But as certain online social activities become more normalized, they will become more intimate and integrated for some users - indeed as they have proven to be already. We risk underestimating the potential of our own work, our own industry, and the future of both the web and human communication if we take a too deterministic view of evolving platforms. My 2 cents. G . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=39528 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
