Questions:



1. If Marshall MacLuhan were still alive , how would he respond to the description of the social implications of Facebook and Twitter described by Thompson?

if macluhan were still alive i believe that he would find the constant status updating intriguing; to know your friends whereabouts and what they were doing at any given moment would be a concept that he was completely unfamiliar with. However, i'm not sure if he would see it as a positive or negative use of technology. From his perspective as someone who avidly promotes the use of technology as a medium of communication it would appear to be a positive advancement. But to an advertiser it would appear differently. Every tweet or status update would be an opportunity to market some object or brand that a person used in their daily life. As a user posting your daily actions, each post is an opportunity to catch somebody's attention and get attention. Socially, twitter and facebook would just give users the idea that someone was always interested in what they are doing.

2. Would you agree or disagree with the claim that Meyrowitz's theory about social space pretty accurately predicts the social effects of these new social web applications? Explain your answer.


3. Describe an example from your own experience with these, or similar applications,that relates to this phenomenon of digital intimacy.
In my experience with status updating my opinion is that i can't be bothered to update my status all the time, i don't always want everyone to know what i am doing, and i enjoy my right to make private plans that other people don't have to read about or know about. If i don't even want to change my status then i doubt people really care to read what it is i am doing at the moment when i change my status. In the past i have gone someplace that another friend wasn't invited to and when she saw pictures that were posted and i was tagged in her feelings were hurt and she was offended that i didnt ask her to come along. In my opinion, situations like those have become more common with social networking sites because everyone is so eager to display an image of themselves as socially active people. This amplifies normal teenage dilemmas tenfold, i can't imagine what new problems i'll have to deal with as a parent in the future when who knows what kind of social networking will be available.