I’m reading The Essays of Montaigne because, well, it’s there. In discussing friendship, ol’ Michel blockquotes Cicero: Those are only to be reputed friendships that are fortified and confirmed by judgment and length of time. Yeah, that’s totally not what happens now. If Facebook’s “friend” becomes the dominant definition of the word, we’re going to …
Tag Archive: Internet
Apr 29 2012
You Are Your Own Paywall
I am highly wary of anyone who would write a book entitled You Are Not a Gadget; oh here we go, a Luddite screed about how Goog-Face-Pads are making us lonely/stupid/lazy. So it was with trepidation that I delved into a lengthy interview at The Edge from last year with Jaron Lanier on what the …
Apr 27 2012
Introverts Defeat Geography
There is a tension that exists between introverts and the extroverts who love them. Extroverts feed off live, in-person human interaction — it refuels them and provides a spark that drives them. For introverts like myself, that spark is a rare, not-looked-for thing. Socializing exhausts us, drains us of energy, of emotion. It’s a necessary …
Dec 26 2011
Unsubscribed
Just as I don’t actually have meaningful relationships or friendships with my 700+ “friends” on Facebook, I also don’t need to feel obliged to give equal value to each of their postings, nor to I need to seek their approval of my own. One’s time and capacity of attention are short, and in regards to Twitter, …
Nov 17 2011
Those Delightful Social Media Squirts
Michael Erard tells the tale of his avoidance of indulging in the trope he calls the Social Media Exile Essay, a report never written of his exit from Facebook: … I wrote a draft of an essay about writing about why I quit Facebook, which was clever but did not contain any of the things I have already said I didn’t write …
Apr 03 2011
The Internet is as Exhausting as You Make It
In the consistently-fascinating journal n+1, Alice Gregory insightfully expounds on the modern race to keep pace with the imagined expectations of the social digital world. I have the sensation, as do my friends, that to function as a proficient human, you must both “keep up” with the internet and pursue more serious, analog interests. I blog about real life; …
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