On 2014-05-15, Mayayana wrote:

The baby boomers know the Internet as a public information
and sharing medium. Younger people have grown up in
a commercial culture. They spend their youth in commercially
owned shopping malls and live their social lives hosted by
corporate service companies like Facebook. For the most
part, these are people who have no experience of citizenship
in any part of their lives. They know themselves and others
as "consumers". They go online to "consume" services from
Facebook, Foursquare, etc, in lieu of a social life.

I find the whole thing both fascinating and scary.
Newsgroups are a simple, text-based conversation medium
that can provide help in almost all areas of life, yet their
"unofficial", non-commercial nature -- the fact that the
participants pretty much make the groups what they are --
makes them virtually invisible to people who live as
consumers.

Nice insightful post and well said.

nb