The world is getting smaller. With the advent of the internet, information that used to be far away and troublesome to obtain is available within a few minutes in your own home. And now, with the advent of social networks any information you need about your friends is available just by checking their blog, or their twitter page, or their facebook page, or any number of online sources for the intimate details of their life once left to their close network of friends.

There’s a bit of a paradox here. I joined facebook primarily because I wanted to catch up with old friends I don’t talk to much anymore. But for the most part, this can be done passively. I add them as friends and when I go to write on their wall, I come across a tidy aggregation of their hobbies, their interests, the music they like, the movies they like, what schools they’ve gone on to, what jobs they’ve held, and much more information. So before I even ask them how things are going, I’ve received the answer.

Beyond this, any answer to a question asked through facebook is automatically tainted with more forethought than that from a private conversation. That response can be read by anyone you’ve deemed a “friend,” a loaded phrase given the hundreds or thousands of “friends” you can amass through social networks. A facebook conversation has a very different dynamic than that of a real conversation.

Because of this, I’ve never found myself enthralled with facebook. Keeping in touch with dozens of former friends is an empty effort to me. I’d much rather cultivate the few good friendships I have in real life. Obviously, you can develop more substantial relationships through facebook, as you would in the real world, but there’s no real incentive to me. In general, friends you’ve lost touch with weren’t lasting friends. Whether it’s because you changed or they changed or you ran out of things to say to each other, friendships die for a reason. Trying to rekindle them through facebook isn’t likely to succeed.

Which I guess is why I barely ever visit facebook anymore. That initial burst of regained connections has faded away. Obviously, this depends on the person. I’m not anti-social per se, but I’m certainly not comfortable in highly social environments which is why I tend to avoid them.

So my intended use of facebook is not what most people use it for, but even excluding that facebook is not a replacement for more direct communication. Whether it’s face to face, or on the phone, or through instant messaging direct communication, that direct connection is needed for friendships to be anything more than acquaintances.

What is /.? Beyond an excuse to sexually abuse your grammar checker, /. (slashdot) is a tech news site. With the recent boom of Web 2.0 many people have seen the future heading away from sites like slashdot where editors determine the content of the site and towards social websites with user generated content.

Of course, the arguments for and against Web 2.0 are numerous and varied. Pretending like I have the definitive answer is absurd, but I do find that historically the solution to most problems is found between the two extremes. Which is why slashdot’s “Fire Hose”  — which allows user generated content to be voted on by anyone but still requires editor’s to officially upgrade it to the front page — is the closest I’ve seen to the best of both worlds.

Of course, people have said for a few years now “go to Digg for the stories, go to slashdot for the comments” which is true for two reasons. Firstly, comments on Digg are frequently stupid, ignorant, racist, prejudiced, or all of these and many more. Their comments are so offensive at times that I no longer go to the site at all because I was simply disgusted by the comments I was seeing on a daily basis. Slashdot, on the other hand, tends to have more comments per story but because of their moderation technique you tend to get really smart or really funny stuff bubbling to the top. Granted, the know-it-alls on slashdot know that they know it all, but if you’re willing to suffer through a bit of conceit you’re almost guaranteed to learn something new or at the very least be given another perspective on something you already know.

Slashdot has an antiquated perception among the younger internet dwellers but I think that slashdot will survive at least as long as Digg and most likely outlive it because of its ability to grow into a new internet experience (social networking, et. al.) while retaining its original goals and experiences. But the real reason slashdot is still relevant is a simple one: quotes like this in random user’s signatures:

“Sisko > Picard > Kirk > Archer > null > Janeway”

Granted, I would have swapped Picard and Sisko but to see another person judge Janeway accurately warms the ventricles of my heart.