Brave New World of Digital Intimacy

Thompson's main claim is that people can connect to many more people and actually keep up with their lives. Zuckerburg first introduced the News Feed to keep up with friends easier. He claimed that to know what was going on people had to actively surf different users profiles. It is so much easier now that Zuckerburg developed News Feed because by simply logging in to Facebook a person can see everybody's posts. I think that the News Feed is a good thing in terms of literacy because in order to to be digitally literate, people need something that is quick and easy to access. Ambient awareness is defined as incessant online contact that is very much like being physically near someone and picking up on their mood. I experience ambient awareness because when looking at people's posts and tweets I can tell how they are feeling. The paradox with ambient awareness is that we are not actually physically with our friends and we did not look at their body language to determine their mood. The downfall is that we may not want to hang out with certain friends as often because we will already know how they are doing and what they have been up to. However a benefit could be that a friends posts or tweets could lead a friend to wanting to hang out with them because they are curious and want to talk about the types of things the friend has been posting. An ambient update is frequent, tiny updates on what a person is doing such as "eating lunch in the student center with Kate". Because so many things are posted or tweeted, most people skim through their news feeds and pick and choose what to read. But by doing this, this proves how people cannot stay concentrated long enough to actually read everyones posts and think about what they really mean. Thompson says that our weak ties and acquaintances actually help us out on social media. He talked about how they are not as similar to us as our close friends are and that they can answer many of our questions that our close friends cannot. But certain people in their 20s feel pressured by social media. They do not want to be involved but they feel like they must in order to maintain a positive image. They do not want people talking about them negatively or posting old pictures of them that could ruin their image. This article defines literacy as the ability to increase the number of people you stay in contact with and keep up with all of their lives.