After listening patiently to the social-network-proselytizing avowals of your techno-metabolized acquaintance, you say something like: “Great, so you can still play with your friends from high school. But what have you given up in the process? How does extending the reach of your adolescent social urges help to address the problems caused by the infrastructural supports for these kinds of toys?”
In response, and without taking a full breath, your acquaintance blurts out: "Egypt! Egypt! Look what Facebook did in Egypt!"
First, the role that Facebook played in the Egyptian “revolution” is 99% grossly exaggerated media sound-bite mythology. Second, to suggest that Facebook played a pivotal role in the Egyptian uprising is like saying boxcars caused the Holocaust.
And if it wasn’t Facebook per se, but the internet itself, and the vast communicative possibilities that it engenders: So it wasn’t boxcars. It was the German railroad system. Or the diesel locomotive. Or…
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