Postmodern friends: are we dreaming about electric sheeps?

I start in this way: I wrote this text to give rise at a discussion on friendship and postmoderniy. Feel free to edit, copy, extend this post. Let's see what happens. [this blog is open to all the students of imke at tallinn, but i think we can open it to anyone who ask for it. tell your opinion in the comments.]



Fast. Short. Connected. Postmodern. This should be a sort of contradiction for friendship.

A friend according to the dictionary is defined as a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard . Friendship according to this definition is more a tie than a link, even if the difference, literally, is not so clear. The word tie refers to a physical attachment. Link instead brings us to think more about connections.

A postmodern friend is not an awaited friends not come, he’s more someone you can chat with in the while, even if you don’t know him . It sounds more like someone you cross on the road and you smile or hi at. Something short, fast, maybe a bit superficial. This is the kind of friends who consider me as it on Facebook. On Facebook I have more than 200 friends. Scary, isn’t it? So many people knowing about my private life?

On Facebook there’s no way between friend and non friend. It’s a strict distinction, a big difference from the real life where we consider people as acquaintance and other some just random friends. Usually a normal person has got an average of 20 tight friends. Facebook revolutioned the concept of friendship: yes or no, take it or leave it. A fast choice, radical, often irreversible. Postmodern.

There’s a sociological word to describe this type of friendship: weak links (or weak ties), in opposition of traditional concept of friendship as a tight relationship. Weak links define a friendship state even if two people see each others once a year, keeping in touch with random calls.

But what we are experiencing with Facebook and any other Social Network is how these weak links are getting stronger and stronger. Twitter, Facebook and similar allow buddies exchanging private information just answering the question what are you doing? The fact behind this is on these networks we have hundreds of friends following us, commenting, posting, spreading our datas. Are these buddies our friends?

It’s all about conversation. Markets are conversations . Conversations are made by media. And according to Gilmore, We are the media. We are the new media, the new markets, the new economy.

You is the person of the year 2006 , according to Times. It’s all about sharing, writing, exchanging knowledge… Everything online. Thanks to the new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. You, me and you together. And we matter.

But does it matter if you and me, we don’t know each other? I think yes, at least as we can chat. This brand new version of the pen friend brings a lot of new consideration.

davide.