“The internet will change everything,” a lot of people said. “How?” I would hear my academic hero ask. “What will they do that’s different? Not faster, or more conveniently, or more efficiently… *different*. How will behavior change?”
I never heard a good answer to that question. People would say – “Oh, but you can buy groceries online.” But, until the boom collapsed, they never got the point that that’s not *different*. People still buy groceries, and they buy the same stuff as before — they’re just going to a different sort of store, but they’re doing the same thing…
Tabula Rasa wonders if the internet has changed the nature of friendship.
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