“Continual connectivity has led to a new sensibility. People move from a way of thinking in which they say, ‘I have a feeling, I want to make a call,’ to one where they say, ‘I want to have a feeling, I need to send a text (or post on a social network).’ Social networking nurtures a way of thinking about the self in which one constitutes a feeling by sending out for comments.
Sherry Turkle in Plazm Magazine (via Lane Collins)
I think this is one of the most spot-on observations I’ve ever seen about what drives people to use social media (and I like to think it dovetails nicely with my own recent thoughts about the “journalistic impulse”). It’s nice to discover that Sherry Turkle is still writing—I read her book “Life on the Screen” back in college and it was a huge influence on me.
