In a recent article in The Atlantic, writer Stephen Marche serves up a provocative perspective on the impact of Facebook and other social network software on society:
We live in an accelerating contradiction: the more connected we become, the lonelier we are.
In the opening lines of the lengthy piece, Marche describes the defining moment of Social Network, the film that chronicled Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s life and career.
The film’s most indelible scene, the one that may well have earned it an Oscar, was the final, silent shot of an anomic Zuckerberg sending out a friend request to his ex-girlfriend, then waiting and clicking and waiting and clicking—a moment of superconnected loneliness preserved in amber.
