I would argue that not only is social networking not doomed to frivolity, it is destined for as important a place in society as any other communication medium.
As proof, please consider this profile of Stephen Heywood, who passed away from ALS in 2006. Before he died, his brothers James and Ben built a site called PatientsLikeMe in order to help him deal with his unknown disease, and today helps thousands of others do the same. While they might not be announcing their worst days on Twitter or Facebook, they are sharing incredibly *non-frivolous* details of their life in public, with other folks like themselves, trying to make the best of it. http://www.patientslikeme.com/patients/view/40 So please, let's get the knee-jerk notion of frivolity out of our heads, look a bit beyond the mundane tweet and wall posts we see so much of, and look at how people are treating the entirety of their lives online. Most of the frivolous stuff is there because people *are* frivolous, it's part of how we have fun, but it sure doesn't account for all of our time online. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=39528 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
