Blog Post

Two weeks ago or so, I clipped an arti­cle from the NY Times that I saved for reflec­tion because it records a phe­nom­e­non of tech­no­log­i­cal and pop cul­ture his­to­ry in the mak­ing. A good sum­ma­ry of Brad Stone’s arti­cle “Old Fogies by Their 20’s” is the sto­ry’s subhead:
“Gen­er­a­tion gaps span just a few years,
E‑mailers give way to text messagers
who give way to the instant messagers.”
I have been pay­ing atten­tion to, and often clip­ping, oth­er print expla­na­tions and inter­pre­ta­tions of sim­i­lar trends, for exam­ple the arti­cle “Why Twit­ter Will Endure,” by David Carr in Jan­u­ary 3rd’s NYT Week in Review.
Now here’s anoth­er move into the future: the appli­ca­tion Foursquare, which has come to this observer’s atten­tion, again, through the NYT (Feb­ru­ary 20). The head­line calls Foursquare and its use “Past Twit­ter.” The app may have been around for a while and this non-iPhone own­er may have not been aware of it because of her need to catch up with younger (hmmm) folk. But, yes, I am open to using social media in ful­fill­ing ways and this sounds like one of these.
What I deduct about Foursquare is that users learn of a local place or site offer­ing some­thing that attracts them, such as a great taco spe­cial­ty, or “where to get a frit­ter or West African arti­facts.” Those attract­ed can go to the site, where they meet oth­ers who also zoned in. So it moves social net­work­ing from a one-on-one process–the indi­vid­ual relat­ing to oth­ers vir­tu­al­ly, via a tool (iPhone, email, Face­book, etc.), at a distance–to meet­ing up and social­iz­ing in real time much quick­er than respond­ing to an invi­ta­tion to an event post­ed on Face­book. I flash on McLuhan’s expres­sion “all-at-once­ness,” and I’m as awed now as a wit­ness to the above as I was when a com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­fes­sor teach­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions in the ear­ly 1970’s and I came across this guy McLuhan.
Got­ta check it out…