The Communications Tree:
Rating Various Forms of Communication as Regards Their Harmony With Truth
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In-person conversation: 100%
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Phone call: 62%
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Email: 35%
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Text: 7%
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Facebook: 3%
The First Organized American Protest Against Facebook
"I told him he was a very sad man, that collecting Facebook friends is the equivalent of being a catlady, collecting numerous Himalayans, which you have neither the time nor the inclination to feed. "You have obviously never been on Facebook," he said. "It's so much worse than collecting cats." (Matt Labash)
One recent piece of research shows that “periodically checking your e-mail lowers your cognitive performance level to that of a drunk." (James Bowman)
"Internet software can be used as parasocietal mechanisms for the observation of online interactions. Online social networks allow for high levels of surveillance." (Susan B. Barnes)
"There are a hundred means of communication, and there is nothing to communicate.” (G.K. Chesterton)
“This... nicely catches the nuances of the ‘Facebook addict’ type: an anti-social, agoraphobic, ‘low maintenance’ lurker who is also a passive-aggressive and voyeuristic stalker accumulating useless social capital.” (Meaghan Morris)
"Facebook is a worldwide pie-stealing phenomenon that needs to be put behind bars." (Yours Truly)
"Oddly enough, Facebook has little to do with faces and nothing to do with books." (Mike C.)
“Modern societies must decide what their loves truly are — or else technology itself will entrap them in what is merely feasible.” (Michael Novak)
"Today we believe our machines allow us to know a lot more, and in many ways they do. What we don’t want to admit — but should — is that they also ensure that we directly experience less." (Christine Rosen)
“The human race has susceptibility to harm but Mr. Zuckerberg has attained an unenviable record: he has done more harm to the human race than anybody else his age.” (Eben Moglen)
"God is omnipresent. Facebook comes in second." (Ironic Catholic)
"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity." (Albert Einstein)
"Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards." (Aldous Huxley)
"Technology... is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other." (Carrie Snow)
"It is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome." (T.S. Eliot, about radio)
"Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation." (Jean Arp)
"The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do." (B. F. Skinner)
"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." (Carl Sagan)
"Television to brainwash us all and Internet to eliminate any last resistance." (Paul Carvel)
"Technology... the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it." (Max Frisch)

8 comments
Comments feed for this article
November 13, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Marissa
What about sending letters in the mail?
December 1, 2010 at 7:06 pm
M. G. Moen
It depends, hand written or typed? if written by hand, was it in cursive or print?
Was the envelope sealed with a lick of the tongue?
adhesive? a wax stamp?
Perhaps it was a postcard? Postcards do resemble status updates.
Actually, I’m going to have to say even a letter penned by hand is above a phone call.
July 7, 2010 at 7:24 pm
xMurphey Talcolmx
3% is a little high don’t you think?
November 13, 2010 at 8:14 pm
Hector
How big was the population in this research? Truth is something really complicated, so who cares about truth when it comes to the internet. It’s all abstract data.
April 7, 2011 at 1:38 am
Vukomanov
I agree with everything, except with that 3% given to Facebook. I would not give it even 1%.
November 13, 2011 at 10:13 am
Max. M.
facebook is not real at all. everybody is pretending and no one is saying what they are thinking. and all that crap to get some sort of attention! i am 15 years old and i hate facebook for a good reason. i rather have 1 friend who isn’t addicted to atention than having 2000 fake friends who are as intelligent as a banana. with facebook, ppl stop thinking for themselves and let other ppl decide. facebook need to be stopped!!! sorry for the bad english im german.
January 23, 2012 at 10:46 am
Kevin P.
Max, you are smarter than most people around my age I know. I’m 32 years old and my girlfriend is 30 years old, we broke up today making us single parents to our 4year old child, why? because she put facebook before us and our family. She turned into a self absorbed heartless cold distant person ever since she got into facebook, even worse when she got a netphone(for facebook of course).
She threw our love and our family away all because she wasn’t willing to put facebook in the back seat of her life. Seven years together and I get the back seat to fb and her phony friends in the end. I just can’t deal with being given the cold shoulder while she worries about checking fakebook every 5 minutes.
All I want is what you want, to have 1 friend who isn’t addicted to attention and having 2000 fake friends. That is too much to ask these days I guess. So here I am now with the rest of you in the desire to bring facebook to an end!
June 17, 2012 at 2:31 pm
N. Brunner
Saw a video commerical from Nivea supporting Natioal PDA Day – June 20, 2012 featuring commentary about how we, as people, are sending too much time on electronic devices to communicate and specifically mentioning facebook! I was begining to feel excited that our message had finally leaked its’ way into the masses, BUT…my cynical nature proved me right again when i saw the sponser—–facebook!!!! Slicky Dick –kind of reminds me of Tricky Dick – you remember him! Anyway…
Take a look at the commic section in our AFLI website and you will see a cartoon that expresses this ‘economic tactic’ in all its glory. Just like the cartoon shows – facebook selling adds to use about being “facebook free”.
Below is video so you can see capitalism at (one of) its’ best! If it won’t embed here – check out the video on the “Comments of the World at Large” section where i mistakenly posted it.