"Since Plato’s diatribe against writing, few emerging media and technologies have been immune from the critique that they disconnect us from the people and places in our lives. Digital media scholar, Erkki Huhtamo, offers one particularly apt example: at the turn of the 19th century in England, some people had become so immersed in their kaleidoscopes that they were completely disconnected from the world around them. The result can be seen in an early engraving depicting the “kaleidoscomania.” The people are so “mesmerized by the visions they see inside the ‘picture tube’ that they do not even notice that other men are courting their companions behind their backs."
#Plato
#media
#digital
#social media
#attention
#technology
#culture
#pyschology
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People who used Facebook largely to socialize tended to be younger, more social and more neurotic—suggesting that Facebook habitués use the site partly as a tool to alleviate loneliness, the researchers said. People who used Twitter to socialize scored high on openness and sociability but low on conscientiousness.
Participants who used Twitter to seek or spread information, as opposed to socializing, were high on measures of conscientiousness and intellectual appetite and low on neuroticism; Facebook information-gatherers were less curious.
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