Re facebook Many of my friends on facebook do not live near enough for me to pop in for a cup of coffee. I can communicate with friends from around the world and keep up with what they are doing so easily on facebook. I am travelling to a wildflower event this weekend which came from a group with a facebook page. I can have two way messages with my children who live about 2hours away and leave them messages whenever I need to-much cheaper than texting. I can share my photos with many friends all at once and keep up with friends' adventures when they are travelling especially overseas. My neighbour has just gone to Spain and I can message him whenever there is a problem at his home. I started using facebook when I was travelling in Brasil to stay in touch with my children in Australia and my mobile phone wouldn't work and I wouldn't be without it. As for time spent-you need to stay in control of that. Am also keeping track of two people who are walking the Camino Track in Spain on a day to day basis-something I aim to do in the future. Like fire facebook is a good servant but a bad master. Shelley > From: bea.spencer@sympatico.ca > To: pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2013 11:56:17 -0400 > Subject: Re: [pbs] Facebook (off topic) > > Hear, hear Diana and Lauw! I agree with your point of view as well. We do live in the age of mindless chatter and the more " Facebook fiends" we have (just to give an example), the more isolated we become. I think that we pretty much have lost the ability to interact socially face to face in many cases. Would it be correct to say that we sort of live in a virtual world with virtual fiends? The English language in any case seems to be woefully inadequate in this case and "a fiend" is an all encompassing word while a distinction between various shades of social interaction would be very welcome, linguistically speaking. This is , however, coming from a person who has lived long enough to remember when one actually talked to his/her friends face to face over a cup of coffee in a café. > Yes, you guessed it. I am not on Facebook. > Bea in Ontario > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/