Andrew Keen is the author of Digital Vertigo: How Today’s Online Social Revolution is Dividing, Diminishing and Disorienting Us, a book where like the title, he talks about how online social networks are breaking up society, which today is not a very original argument. He believes people do not really live outside of social networks, but rather that people do everything on these online sites.
through services like Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. Rather than virtual or second life, social media is actually becoming life itself—the central and increasingly transparent stage of human existence, what silicon valley venture capitalists are now calling an “internet of people” As the fictionalized version of Facebook president Sean Parker—played with such panache by Justin Timberlake—predicted in the 2010 Oscar nominated movie The Social Network: “We lived in farms, then we lived in cities, and now we’re gonna live on the Internet!” Social media is, thus, like home
I don’t agree with Keen’s argument because although it may seem from a quick glance that people do “live” on the internet, I think its just another medium of connecting and socializing. People can be as involved or connected as they wish, and some people are definitely more online than other and it does seem that some people actually do live online, but at the end of the day, when people aren’t physically together, the internet and sites like Facebook begin to bridge the physical gap.
I agree with your comment that the Internet and sites like Facebook begin to bridge the physical gap. With that being said, I do think the majority of people “live” on the Internet and use it as the primary means of communication. Although it’s nice to see the Internet as just a means of communication, unfortunately, I think it has become much more than that…people go above and beyond communicating.
You said it begins to bridge the physical gap, you don’t think it might be even replacing it.? People are constantly updating and posting, yes some more than others, but as new technological advances come into light you don’t think it will become more and more of our real world (as its slowly doing so I believe) than our fake?