I watched live as these people rebuilt themselves after events -- changing their avatars, joining new causes as well as liking and linking to other sites as they raged over stupid remarks, then posting new jokes or uploading pictures. The process of learning to see the complexities of the world through fresh eyes. There is no other medium that has taught me this in the same manner. even the personal memoir in literature has more space and compression than these status updates. In the age which is social media it might be a bit odd that the powerful evidence of sorrow from one person is quickly followed by images of freshly baked cookies from a different. However, Facebook is created by algorithms that do not have emotions. It's not a story: The cancer of the breast was put into remission, however the stories about the radiation treatments continue. The lost children are still photos and are interspersed through the lives of many hundreds. The everyday details start to appear in these threads. The tide is bringing status updates, while the tide takes them away. Social media doesn't have a grasp of anything other than the relationships between people and the continuous stream of time: There are no beginnings and no ends. The disparate threads of human life alternately astonish and amuse this segment of the world of media which was raised with topic sentences and solid conclusions. The world of the old media is like a steampunk-like machine that arranges time into stories. I refer to it as the Epiphanator as it's always recognized the importance of a significant conclusion. The Epiphanator is situated in the middle of Manhattan and is a slithering whirlwind on Conde Nast and at the Times as well as in Rockefeller Center. Each day, it makes the most horrible grinding noise and then spits out newspapers as well as television shows. Every week, it blasts out weekly magazines and television shows. Each month, it makes glossy magazines. It is also the source of films, and even novels. In the final section of every magazine article, prior to there "#," article is the quotation from the general of Afghanistan which ties everything together. The news program of the evening concludes with the Secretary of State climbing back on her helicopter. There's the kiss and that kicker quick return, and that defused explosive. The Epiphanator relays all of them. It assures us that everything is in order. It believes that the world is logical, and that there is a underlying logic. To protect its territory it sends its most prestigious knights to battle this kraken from the ocean of updates. Zadie Smith in the New York Review of Books: "When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced ... Our denuded networked selves don't look more free, they just look more owned. "I have a lot of opinions on social media that make me sound like a grumpy old man sitting on the porch yelling at kids," stated Social Network screenwriter Aaron Sorkin recently. "There's no depth. Life is complex. It is essential to be able to communicate complex.
- hashtechbilisim