Comment 48827

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted October 05, 2010 at 13:30:42

I agree pretty strongly with mystoneycreek here - social networks like Facebook and so many others function mainly as consumables. That doesn't mean all internet-based social networks are, though. Real life communities like PureRave and BME were doing this years before facebook, with all the same basic functions, and a lot more interesting things going on.

The sites which are really transforming things get a lot less fanfare - craigslist, freecycle, instructables, etc. And in a lot of ways I think we're really only seeing the beginning of that type of thing.

And in any case, sometimes the revolutions produced by technologies like these have little to do with the stated purpose, and was barely imagined in the beginning. Other groups adopt these things and use them for their own purposes. Consider Paris, for instance, where a big factor in the near-constant riots is the technological superiority of the rioters' text-message based communication system.

"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford

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