Frankly, if a hundred million people want to type and read public telegrams to each other on a massive scale (i.e. Twitter and Facebook), I’ll consider that an improvement, since in ages past, they would probably be illiterate peasants.

But that begs the question, “is Twittering destroying long conversation”, with the answer, “no, it’s bootstrapping it.” William would rather answer the question “yes”, and pull the cultural fire alarm.

Personally, I find that the bigger threat to my “capacity for intimacy” is the number of hours I have to work. For me, “social networking” is a tool for leveraging what little non-work time remains.