I guess what I was trying to say is that with a wider perspective all matter is highly volatile. It is a good bet that the printed copy I have of your book will disintegrate sometime in the next thousand years. In this way the stability is an illusion caused by our short life spans. The highly volatile status updates just remind us that everything is meaningless, utterly meaningless, so enjoy your pointless life anyway.

I’ve always like printed media because it feels more ‘real’- it doesn’t change when the power goes, it is felt by my hands as well as seen by my eyes, it is not back-lit. All these things make it more tangible to me. I can also see the edges of its dimensions which somehow makes it more dealable with. E-writing can always be connected to something else by one click and although in some sense bibliographies and refs do the same thing in articles, the fact that you have to go and get the next thing helps to contain it. In short I feel more in control of the medium when I can see it doesn’t make up all my world: I can hold it, I can file it, I can shred it. Not very eco-”right-on” I suppose, but I find research easier to do by scanning a page that takes up a small part of my visual field than sitting with it taking up all of my screen.

I wonder what people thought at the invention of the printing press. How the ‘modern generation’ of under 30s were high speed printers & readers who didn’t have time to carefully write out their text by hand.

“existing within short forms reduces not only depth of understanding, but the level of richness in a communication, and thus a relationship.”

I think of status updates as the equivalent to meeting friends and acquaintances in the pub. Some of the responses to my “how are you” will be “fine” and I’ll accept that expected social shorthand and glide on. Other friends I will want to take aside in private and say “what did you mean by fine?”. Isn’t that what the message bit of Fb is for? Like/comment on some status updates, discuss others in private at a greater depth of understanding, level of richness in a communication, and thus relationship.

Moreover, it can only be within the long form that nuance and comlexity can be explored. So existing within short forms reduces not only depth of understanding, but the level of richness in a communication, and thus a relationship.

In the natural world we look at something and it looks like it is not changing (just as the screen looks like it is not changing) but in fact when you break it down to its constituent parts often times there are molecules that are reacting and changing just at a very small and often very slow level, unless you go even further to the subatomic level at which point the electrons are flying around and very quick speeds. Not really sure what this all means, but the other comments just got me thinking.

If you havn’t read Flickering Pixels by Shane Hipps you should check it out for sure! Drawing on Mcluhan’s work, Hipps points out how in the electronic age we live we are becoming a “tribe of individuals.”

I think it’s important to understand that new technologies or “mediums” aren’t necessarily good or bad, but they are NOT neutral. They do have power to change us. I commented on my friend Callid’s post on this subject, check it out.

Shalom

http://bit.ly/50Vi0u

I also wonder if our obsession with the “short form” can be extended to almost all areas of life. I especially am thinking about our short-sightedness regarding life in general. We pursue instant gratification but in most cases that gratification is both short lived and empty. Fast food, our attitude towards the environment, pornography, finances and community/social relationships are just some of the examples I was thinking of.