In Fred Turner’s, “Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy”, the Whole Earth Catalog is described as being a magazine the allowed individuals to write in and critique or suggest whatever technology they had recently come across. The individuals could respond to one another when each of the new catalogs came out, but Turner explained that the downside of this was that the response to one another was not instantaneous. Instead, it would take months for the responses to reach the individuals because they had to wait for the new catalog to come out. Also the Whole Earth Catalog was a place for individuals to rate products, not a place for them the buy these products so there was no immediate money, besides the cost of the magazine, coming from producing this catalog. Next, WELL was introduced on an online form. This allowed the responses to others to be instantaneous and also allowed individuals that did not even know each other to become connected.
The site created by WELL instantly made me think of the social networking sites that we have today. First, in my decade, MySpace was the most used social networking site. Next came Facebook, which is still a very popular networking site. And of course, the most recent networking site is Twitter. Since I no longer have MySpace and also do not have a Twitter account, I will relate Turner’s article to Facebook. I use Facebook to stay connected with people I know, and even people I do not know. I am able to stay informed on individual’s lives while also learning their opinions of the newest movie, newest phone, newest technology, or other commodities individuals think are important to share with their friends.
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