The vast majority of teens who use social networking sites say they use the sites to maintain their current friendships, while half report using the sites to make new friends. Teens say they use social networking sites to stay in touch with friends they see a lot (91% of social networking teens report this), but also to maintain contact with those friends they rarely see in person (82%). Just half of all social networking teens report using the sites to make new friends. —Amanda Lenhart and Mary Madden —Social Networking Websites and Teens: An Overview (Pew Internet & Americal Life Project)
A good source of fresh statistics. I had already noticed that my freshmen are arriving on campus with their online networks already in place, so I’m no longer seeing the intense blog-based bonding that happened at SHU in the fall of 2003 and 2004, when I gave campus blogs to large numbers of freshmen who mostly had no previous online presence. I don’t see this as a problem — the academic blogs are still useful, but fewer students are continuing to blog on their own in between classes. I gather that they are doing their online networking in the commercial spaces rather than at SHU.
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That's a good assessment, Kevin.
I heard about those hand crank laptops....
<br/>Back to the topic, however, the same technological advances that are used to give the internet to remote areas is the same technology that have people around the world at the edge of their seats hoping a war doesn't go nuclear. I agree with the notation that people will always be afraid of new things and new concepts. Nevertheless, the natural concepts out there are the things that will never die. Using your example, Dr. Jerz, the oral tradition is making a comeback with an ironic technological boost.
Kevin, in ancient Greece, the dominant intellectual culture was oral. But when the written word became more prevalent, many accomplished speakers decried the ease with which any inexperienced bozo could just read a pre-prepared speech off of a piece of paper, rather than come about the speech the honest way, but composing it in their heads in real-time while a debate was going on. Still, I don't think most people today think that paper and ink are doing our thinking for us. (Incidentally, we're seeing something of a resurgence in an oral culture, first with the telephone, then with talk radio, and now with podcasting.)
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<br/>More humanists need to get involved in the design of the software we are all supposed to use, and get involved in the creation (authorship) of the internet that technology makes possible. All technology has a social dimension, and we are only powerless if we can't be bothered to learn about that technology. That doesn't mean everyone has to be a programmer, but educating yourself about open.-source alternatives to Windows is a good start. Technology won't solve all the world's problems, but at the moment we have a great gap between the haves and the have-nots. I'm excited about the One Laptop Per Child initiative, which promises hundred-dollar laptops for poor children around the world. These laptops won't run Microsoft, but rather free software developed by volunteers. These laptops won't even need electricity -- the idea is that they can be powered by a hand crank. And they will create their own wireless network, so there is no need to pay an internet bill.
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<br/>Technology is controlling and limiting when the financial interests of powerful people require tight restrictions on content, but there are many techno-idealists out there who envision great things that can happen when the free sharing of intellectual ideas (which is embedded into the software that runs the internet) continues to spread.
Facebook and MySpace is merely showing how technological experienced incoming classes are becoming. It is useful when finding yourself going head first into a paperless course like EL150 (Spring 2006. Academic blogging should replace the cumbersome effects of the three ring binder. Scary thought is it not? Technology is quickly forcing itself in to our everyday lives. When reading this blog I think of E.M. Forster's infamous story "The Machine Stops". Will we become so dependent on the support of computers and PDA's that they will do the thinking instead of us.