[Air-L] dystopian theme

[Jack Harris]

What's most interesting about this meme, if you can call it that, is that
mobile & internet-enabled technologies not only collapse space & time but
also reinforce personal ties, be they weak or strong. That's a first for
communication technologies, or at least electronic communication
technologies. Locating this strain of thinking within American(or U.S.)
political thought is a much needed analysis & narrative.  Hawthorne
criticized the telegraph because he saw it as an unnecessary link between
disparate political cultures while Tocqueville saw technology & industry as
core components of the American sense of self along with civic
associations. There is a lot of fun history & culture to be mined here.  -
jack


On Sun, Aug 25, 2013 at 6:15 PM, Barry Wellman <wellman at chass.utoronto.ca>wrote:

> Charles,
> I also think the bartender's remark reflects the continuing dystopian meme
> that new tech is going to kill off old true community. Sherry Turkle's
> Alone Together is a recent example, as is the obssessive nature of NYT
> op-eds and magazine pieces (as distinct from their good news reporting).
>
> Leo Marx's The Machine in the Garden first got me thinking about this, and
> I put a bunch of early internet examples into "Net Surfers Dont Ride Alone"
> and "Physical Space and Cyber Place"
>
> Marx traces back to Tommy Jefferson. One day, I'll do a book on this.
>
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-- 
_____________________________
Jack Harris

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jackharrisnyc/

http://rci-rutgers.academia.edu/JackLHarris

Eagleton Fellow 2010-2011
Rutgers University --- Eagleton Institute of Politics

952-212-7287
jackharris999 at gmail.com

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