Greetings my friends. Yes, friends. I am calling you all that because isn’t that what we are? On a close personal intimate lets-chat-over-dinner, face-to-face sort of way perhaps not. But on a symbolic level? Why not?
Both corporeal and virtual mobility as well as the vast, networked complexity of our global society is deeming the old notion of ‘friend’ obsolete. As we attempt to set a straight definition for the chance-encounters and informal ties we are recreating within our daily lives, how are we defining those with whom we are interacting with? A friend? A best friend? A social tie? An acquaintance? A networker? How can we categorize the person we talk to at the bus stop on a daily basis, the individual we chatted with online for the past two hours, or that someone who we were visiting on vacation last summer? We are increasingly stumbling for words or exact definitions. Moreover, the actual functional magnitude these friends have on a societal perspective, known as the social capital, is just beginning to be understood. What is the relationship between who we know, and how we function and become mobile within the global complex web we are living in?
This is an issue I am currently investigating. Do you have thoughts? Who are friends to you? Is it a good thing having all those facebook profiles just a click away?
For those of you still interested and care to read more, I suggest:
Adams, Rebecca G. and Allan, Graham. . 1998. Placing Friendship in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
boyd, dana. 2006. “Friends, Friendsters, and Top 8: Writing Community into being on social network sites.” First Monday Online, (December). http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_12/boyd/#author (October, 2007)
Chambers, Deborah. 2006. New Social Ties: contemporary connections in a fragmented society. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
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