- When iPad is on Ebook mode, it looks like wax table
Having been debating with myself on whether to write complimenting blogs on Writing on the Wall or to raise my genuine perspective, I determined to opt for the latter route after suffered an horrendous, appalling experience yesterday. It was at night when the friends’ gathering started, which, after all, was expected to be a welcoming atmosphere as we all applauded to the person who initiated. The meeting took place in a coffee shop on main street and I was naively picturing our meeting would turn out to be heated discussions like those in the English coffee houses described by Tom Standage. Well, it was not that I avalanched expectations on others but since we have barely seen one another for years, it should been a lot to catch up on. Nevertheless, the reunion turned into “I talk about myself and looking at my iPad, chatting on my phone” while the CONVERSATION was falling short beyond words. Yes I am convinced by Tom’s thorough research illustrating that the Information Age in which we live today, has already existed since the first century, from the Papyrus letters to Martin Luther’s and-printed Reformation pamphlets. However, the lost of personal BOND was never existed during the “old old” social media age as what we are experiencing now. Social media is seemingly making the millennial less “social” per say than the Social Media of Papyrus and Wax Tables. In the first century BC, Romans were making efforts to “social media-ING” with one another, delivering and exchanging messages to ensure communication. However the 21-century social media may possibly, if not surprisingly, feed increase amount of isolated individuals, individuals who prefer to sit before a digital media screen rather than talking with a real person.
Then take a look at social media to family bonding. To Romans communicating channels for family members may means writing a SPT (sends greetings to) on a wax tablet while to us it can equals but a “Poke”,”Like”, “Follow” to relatives on Facebook. Writing on the Wall seems to carry the philosophy that today when one posts a tweet, repinning a Tumblr image, or sharing a link on Facebook, he/she is continuing a deep and rich tradition of social media sharing that goes way back more than 2,000 years ago to Roman times, and the mass media is an interruption to this thread in the middle, featured with its shortage of information interaction. The Previous “social media” is for strengthening the community close knit but on the contrary the Current “social media” to some extent distanced our face-to-face connection with communities around us.
What Tom points out that “the spirit of the coffee house has been reborn in our social-media platform” is not a revival of the 1600’s social media platform but a connection to the spider web which has had the thread from the prior era but now radiating and sewing each of us like a decimal point on Google Earth all together.
Writing in a Digital Age 