Stephen Fry on social networking through the ages

Stephen Fry � Blog Archive � Social networking through the ages

"Is it part of some deep human instinct that we take an organism as open and wild and free as the internet, and wish then to divide it into citadels, into closed-border republics and independent city states? The systole and diastole of history has us opening and closing like a flower: escaping our fortresses and enclosures into the open fields, and then building hedges, villages and cities in which to imprison ourselves again before repeating the process once more. The internet seems to be following this pattern."

Another excellent post from Stephen Fry. Instead of looking at social networking a our need to interact, he compares it to our need to divide and enclose the great wide open.