# Networked  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Lee Rainie, Barry Wellman]] - Full Title:: Networked - Category: #books ## Highlights > Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. Timon had said, “I am wealthy in my friends.” ([Location 310](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=310)) > An environment that spawns more social liberation also demands more social effort when people have desires or problems they want solved. This is where technology is especially useful. A major difference between the past and now is that the social ties people enjoy today are more abundant and more easily nourished by contact through new technologies. ([Location 399](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=399)) > This means that networked individuals can have a variety of social ties to count on, but are less likely to have one sure-fire “home” community. Looser and more diverse social networks require more choreography and exertion to manage. ([Location 459](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=459)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Third, mobile phones are crucial in less-developed countries because they are often the first means of telecommunications that people have ever had. While mobile phones increase connectivity to people in the developed world, ([Location 2412](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=2412)) > they provide even greater improvements in connectivity and social capital in the less-developed world. They intensify contact with dispersed family members, expand networks, and enhance sociability and support. They substitute for often-difficult travel, provide price information to marketers, and extend business and family relations.14 ([Location 2414](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=2414)) > By 2011, more than three-quarters of the world’s mobile phones were in less-developed countries, with China alone having some 879 million subscribers (and even more users of shared phones).15 “For you, it was incremental—here it is revolutionary,” asserts Isaac Nsereko of Africa’s largest mobile operator, MTN.16 ([Location 2417](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=2417)) > Teens are especially networked via texting. A 2011 Pew Internet survey of those ages twelve to seventeen shows that the average teen texter sends and receives fifty texts a day (1,500 per month) and one third handle double that volume—over three thousand per month. ([Location 2430](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=2430)) > In general, teens see the mobile phone as an instrument of intimacy. They use Facebook and instant messaging for more distant or newer relationships.19 ([Location 2478](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=2478)) > The rise of smartphones and the surrounding apps ecology has prompted spirited debate about whether non-web exchanges that run on the internet but not on the web—such as mobile apps, peer-to-peer services, video exchanges, and downloads—would supplant web applications as the dominant form of media and communication exchanges. Wired magazine kicked off the debate with a provocative cover story, “The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet,” laying out a credible scenario where people turn away from the sprawling, browser-based, search-oriented web in their search and content-creation activities toward the more customized world of non-web, mobile apps. The argument about the validity of its thesis rages on through this writing.24 ([Location 2510](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=2510)) > Others confess that their phone is part of their body. As sociologist Manuel Castells argues: “We now have a wireless skin overlaid on the practices of our lives, so that we are in ourselves and in our networks at the same time. We never quit the networks, and the networks never quit us; this is the real coming of age of the networked society. … People can now build their own information systems.”28 ([Location 2560](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=2560)) > Scattered studies suggest problems. For example, distracted drivers do not need to be holding mobile phones to have higher accident rates—it is the act of talking on the phone that is the issue. While walking, mobile phone users are more likely to ignore key things happening around them. Pew Internet found that 17 percent of mobile owners had bumped into another person or object when they were distracted by talking or texting on their phones.44 In one experiment, more than half of participants did not notice a clown unicycling nearby.45 Two-thirds of employees want to ban smartphone use at meetings as distracting and impolite. And one women wrote to advice columnist “Dear Abby” complaining about others chatting on mobiles while using public toilets.46 ([Location 2724](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=2724)) > People who use ICTs (information and communication technologies) have larger and more diverse networks than others.11 On average, a Pew Internet study showed, the size of people’s discussion networks—those with whom they discuss important matters—is 12 percent larger among mobile phone users, 9 percent larger for individuals who share photos online, and 9 percent bigger for those who use instant messaging. The diversity of people’s core networks—their closest and most significant confidants—tends to be 25 percent larger for mobile phone users, 15 percent larger for occasional internet users, and even larger for frequent internet users. ([Location 3102](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=3102)) > Their fixation on the internet has ignored nearly a century of research showing that technological changes before the internet—planes, trains, telephones, telegraphs, and cars—neither destroyed relationships and communities nor left them alone as remnants locked up in rural and urban villages. Fifty years of research have shown that people are in sizeable and supportive networks, both local and long-distance.15 When asked, few people say that they, themselves, are living lives of lonely desperation, and they are aware that most of their friends, neighbors, relatives, and coworkers are also in supportive networks. Yet, even with these realizations, some people—and commentators—believe that they are the exceptions and that the masses around them are lonely, isolated, and fearful. ([Location 3147](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=3147)) # Networked  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Lee Rainie, Barry Wellman]] - Full Title:: Networked - Category: #books ## Highlights > Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens. Timon had said, “I am wealthy in my friends.” ([Location 310](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=310)) > An environment that spawns more social liberation also demands more social effort when people have desires or problems they want solved. This is where technology is especially useful. A major difference between the past and now is that the social ties people enjoy today are more abundant and more easily nourished by contact through new technologies. ([Location 399](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=399)) > This means that networked individuals can have a variety of social ties to count on, but are less likely to have one sure-fire “home” community. Looser and more diverse social networks require more choreography and exertion to manage. ([Location 459](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=459)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Third, mobile phones are crucial in less-developed countries because they are often the first means of telecommunications that people have ever had. While mobile phones increase connectivity to people in the developed world, ([Location 2412](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=2412)) > they provide even greater improvements in connectivity and social capital in the less-developed world. They intensify contact with dispersed family members, expand networks, and enhance sociability and support. They substitute for often-difficult travel, provide price information to marketers, and extend business and family relations.14 ([Location 2414](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=2414)) > By 2011, more than three-quarters of the world’s mobile phones were in less-developed countries, with China alone having some 879 million subscribers (and even more users of shared phones).15 “For you, it was incremental—here it is revolutionary,” asserts Isaac Nsereko of Africa’s largest mobile operator, MTN.16 ([Location 2417](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=2417)) > Teens are especially networked via texting. A 2011 Pew Internet survey of those ages twelve to seventeen shows that the average teen texter sends and receives fifty texts a day (1,500 per month) and one third handle double that volume—over three thousand per month. ([Location 2430](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=2430)) > In general, teens see the mobile phone as an instrument of intimacy. They use Facebook and instant messaging for more distant or newer relationships.19 ([Location 2478](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=2478)) > The rise of smartphones and the surrounding apps ecology has prompted spirited debate about whether non-web exchanges that run on the internet but not on the web—such as mobile apps, peer-to-peer services, video exchanges, and downloads—would supplant web applications as the dominant form of media and communication exchanges. Wired magazine kicked off the debate with a provocative cover story, “The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet,” laying out a credible scenario where people turn away from the sprawling, browser-based, search-oriented web in their search and content-creation activities toward the more customized world of non-web, mobile apps. The argument about the validity of its thesis rages on through this writing.24 ([Location 2510](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=2510)) > Others confess that their phone is part of their body. As sociologist Manuel Castells argues: “We now have a wireless skin overlaid on the practices of our lives, so that we are in ourselves and in our networks at the same time. We never quit the networks, and the networks never quit us; this is the real coming of age of the networked society. … People can now build their own information systems.”28 ([Location 2560](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=2560)) > Scattered studies suggest problems. For example, distracted drivers do not need to be holding mobile phones to have higher accident rates—it is the act of talking on the phone that is the issue. While walking, mobile phone users are more likely to ignore key things happening around them. Pew Internet found that 17 percent of mobile owners had bumped into another person or object when they were distracted by talking or texting on their phones.44 In one experiment, more than half of participants did not notice a clown unicycling nearby.45 Two-thirds of employees want to ban smartphone use at meetings as distracting and impolite. And one women wrote to advice columnist “Dear Abby” complaining about others chatting on mobiles while using public toilets.46 ([Location 2724](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=2724)) > People who use ICTs (information and communication technologies) have larger and more diverse networks than others.11 On average, a Pew Internet study showed, the size of people’s discussion networks—those with whom they discuss important matters—is 12 percent larger among mobile phone users, 9 percent larger for individuals who share photos online, and 9 percent bigger for those who use instant messaging. The diversity of people’s core networks—their closest and most significant confidants—tends to be 25 percent larger for mobile phone users, 15 percent larger for occasional internet users, and even larger for frequent internet users. ([Location 3102](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=3102)) > Their fixation on the internet has ignored nearly a century of research showing that technological changes before the internet—planes, trains, telephones, telegraphs, and cars—neither destroyed relationships and communities nor left them alone as remnants locked up in rural and urban villages. Fifty years of research have shown that people are in sizeable and supportive networks, both local and long-distance.15 When asked, few people say that they, themselves, are living lives of lonely desperation, and they are aware that most of their friends, neighbors, relatives, and coworkers are also in supportive networks. Yet, even with these realizations, some people—and commentators—believe that they are the exceptions and that the masses around them are lonely, isolated, and fearful. ([Location 3147](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B007Z6GW0Y&location=3147))