Social Tendencies and Blogging: Point / Counter-Point
Now Playing: 5/11/06 WSJ Podcast::
I'm mashing up two quotes for a new point/counter-point post (see the original here and the 2nd one here). The first quote is from Chapter 8 of the free PDF book, The Virtual Handshake by David Teten and Scott Allen, which the master networker Keith Ferrazzi recommended:

Point:
"What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured."

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Commencement Address at Hobart and Williams Smith Colleges, 1974

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The second quote is from a 4/20/06 WSJ op-ed article on blogging, Disinhibition Nation by Daniel Henninger:

Counter-Point:
"The power of the Web is obvious and undeniable. We diminish it at our peril. But what if the most potent social effect to spread outward from the Internet turns out to be disinhibition, the breaking down of personal restraints and the endless elevation of oneself? It may be already...
The web is nothing if not 'social.' But the blogosphere is also the product not of people meeting, but venting alone at the keyboard with all the uninhibited, bat-out-of-hell hyperbole of thinking, suggestion and expression that this new technology seems to release...
But researchers note that the isolation of Web life results in many missed social cues."