Bix dot Blog

I don’t think that I thought that “social was a panacea”, and I don’t mean by that to say that I thought better than Colin Walker; I mean in fact that I doubt I really thought about it at all at the time. When social media (as opposed to the slightly-earlier iteration that was “merely” social networking) was taking off, I mostly was out of my blogging phase (and so my thinking-about-the-web phase) and well into my fandom phase. (In fact, although I wasn’t using it myself until 2008, I think my first knowledge of Twitter came from fans using it during the Writers Guild of America strike in 2007.) As I think back at it all now, I think that transitionary period from social networking to social media is the point at which activity on the internet truly began its shift from activities of place to those simply of space. It’s that sense of placeness in what we choose to do here that I think is at the heart of that which some folks are trying to revive.