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AR's avatar

Great excerpt from your book. As always your writings make me better see and understand the digital water I find myself swimming in. I have always found your books and articles extremely well written and I admire your ability to break down complex ideas and tie them in a narrative thread which I am able to follow.

I did find this excerpt slightly denser than usual but I attribute that to my unfamiliarity with basic concepts in Psychology and Sociology. I expect Superbloom to be denser because of this, but I look forward to reading it soon.

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JOSHUA MEYROWITZ's avatar

To Nicholas Carr: As a long-time admirer of your theory-based work. I very much appreciate your detailing in Superbloom the increasing relevance of the theoretical framework I developed in my 1985 book, No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior (Oxford). As you write, my work adapts the place-based theories of the self by Cooley, Mead, and Goffman to settings that are not physically bounded. That approach to media was not welcomed by everyone 40 years ago. My study of how major changes in media alter the geography of social situations and affect social roles – including those of children and adults, different genders, and leaders and followers – was alien to those focusing on message content and concerns over simple imitation and persuasion. Thank you for bringing the perspective of media evolution changing “patterns of social information flow” into central focus as a way of understanding "where" we live now.

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