discusses the changes in what friendship means from classical times, through modernity, to the present. He argues that the meaning of friendship has changed from a relationship to a feeling, which he thinks is an erosion. Do you agree?
Yet what, in our brave new mediated world, is friendship becoming? The Facebook phenomenon, so sudden and forceful a distortion of social space, needs little elaboration. Having been relegated to our screens, are our friendships now anything more than a form of distraction? When they’ve shrunk to the size of a wall post, do they retain any content? If we have 768 “friends,” in what sense do we have any? Facebook isn’t the whole of contemporary friendship, but it sure looks a lot like its future.
You must log in to post a comment.