What's most interesting about this meme, if you can call it that, is that mobile & internet-enabled technologies not only collapse space & time but also reinforce personal ties, be they weak or strong. That's a first for communication technologies, or at least electronic communication technologies. Locating this strain of thinking within American(or U.S.) political thought is a much needed analysis & narrative. Hawthorne criticized the telegraph because he saw it as an unnecessary link between disparate political cultures while Tocqueville saw technology & industry as core components of the American sense of self along with civic associations. There is a lot of fun history & culture to be mined here. - jack On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 6:15 PM, Barry Wellman <wellman@chass.utoronto.ca>wrote:
Charles, I also think the bartender's remark reflects the continuing dystopian meme that new tech is going to kill off old true community. Sherry Turkle's Alone Together is a recent example, as is the obssessive nature of NYT op-eds and magazine pieces (as distinct from their good news reporting).
Leo Marx's The Machine in the Garden first got me thinking about this, and I put a bunch of early internet examples into "Net Surfers Dont Ride Alone" and "Physical Space and Cyber Place"
Marx traces back to Tommy Jefferson. One day, I'll do a book on this.
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