[taelor_rb]

I hate when people say this.

I am a bartender and a hacker. I go out at night. I have tons of friends. I can have an engaging conversation on the train with a complete stranger. I think I'm fairly social, moreover everyone else says I'm really social.

But at the same time I love Facebook. I'm on it all the time. I talk to people about their facebook comments, face to face. I talk to people telling them to expect a cool link on some new HTML 5.

Its not artificial, its just "the new hotness". I honestly think I can be hyper-social now, both through the net and the real world.

[kunley]

You missed my point, I said "at the moment", so let's repeat: it's artificial when it happens at the same time when real communication is in place already but people turn to their twitter or whatever.

On the other hand if you have a problem with what I said then it's just your another problem. I prefer to talk to people about life things not about Facebook comments. YMMV

[potatolicious]

Most of the world is not Reddit ;) Which is to say, I rarely see people on Facebook talking about Facebook. In fact, they are more often than not talking about... life things.

> "it's artificial when it happens at the same time when real communication is in place already but people turn to their twitter or whatever"

Yet... even before smartphones, before you could get lost in Facebook or Twitter on a bus, people still weren't talking to each other. The fact that we are placed in a situation with great social potential, yet do nothing about it, is hardly the fault of this technology we've created. It's not as if buses and trains were the hub of social affairs prior to the invention of the mobile web.

[kunley]

You've touched a significant point I'd like to follow.

I guess we are very responsible for the impact of the technology we create. That's why I'm saying all this stuff here - we are not mere hackers who give people the toys or tools to work with and forget what and why we created it. With every new web application we're creating a new way people will spend their time (in the biz lingua: new business processes blah blah). It's our responsibility to make it meaningful for the people.

It's like with the mass media: some people say that making a silly tv show is what people want but my whole point is that such thinking is broken. People want to relax with what's on air and that's all -- they don't want to spend their time making superfluous choices to check what's really good for them. Everyone has such little time for entertainment in today's world. So if you're broadcasting something it's your responsibility to make it meaningful for the people, not their responsibility. I'm thinking in the same way of internet tools and applications.