A few longer reads that have appeared lately, proving that everyone loves to moan and groan about progress:

• The Flight from Conversation (New York Times)
On technology and the fear of interacting with other people. Personally, I think it’s a little overblown and too much of the blame is put on technology when there’s been so much other societal change (probably mainly rampant urbanization) going on. And the evidence shows that strong social media users have more and stronger offline ties, too.

• Facebook: Like? (Intelligent Life)
What is Facebook, and where is it going?

• Is Facebook Making Us Lonely? (The Atlantic)
Like the first story, I think this is much ado about nothing – there have always been lonely and out-of-place people, but now they have more outlets for communication, not less. Correlation and causation aren’t the same thing.