05 AUG 2013 by ideonexus
Social Networks Limit Interaction to "Autistic" Levels
It is hardly surprising that many participants find social interactions
on Friendster formulaic. The social structure is defined by a narrow set of rules that do little to map the complexities and nuances of relationships in other contexts. Formula-driven social worlds require everyone to engage with each other through a severely diminished mediator—what I have else- where called autistic social software, as a metaphor to signal the structured formula that autistic individuals learn to nego...Because of the limited kinds of interactions possible within a Social Network.
18 MAR 2012 by ideonexus
The Telephone as Miracle
If you had come to me a hundred years ago, do you think I should have dreamed of the telephone? Why, even now I cannot understand it! I use it every day, I transact half my correspondence by means of it, but I don’t understand it. Thnk of that little stretched disk of iron at the end of a wire repeating in your ear not only sounds, but words—not only words, but all the most delicate and elusive inflections and nuances of tone which separate one human voice from another! Is not that someth...Crookes uses one daily, but is fascinated by it.