Getting intimate on the Internet

In the article "A Brave New World of Digital Intimacy" Thompson is claiming that social media is perhaps driving society apart rather then bringing they together more. He talks about the news feed on Facebook. Zuckerburg introduced the news feed to make all updates on Facebook more accessible your friends. He wanted people to be able to scroll through one page and see all what was happening in their friends lives. This new power that Zuckerburg gave us also came at a price; it made us become "ambient aware" of our friends. The article describes ambient awareness as looking at your friends through peripheral vision, knowing that they are there, but not really paying attention to them. Thompson describes us as skimming what our friends are doing, not quite being able to focus on what they are doing. This skimming mentality is parallel to what the other articles have been saying about or society today. We are unable to focus on long portions of text, just like we are unable to focus on what our friends are doing. Thompson indirectly describes literacy as the ability to focus on what we are reading, not just reading and writing.