Baby Face

One of the arguments Elizabeth Drescher suggests in her book Tweet If You ♥ Jesus is that social media actually retrieves ways of communicating that gradually disintegrated after the invention of the printing press. With the bound book's advent, we moved away from churches and reading Scripture together in an assembly to reading privately and with that shift, our ideas of public an private were changed as well. Drescher suggests that "premodern communication ...is fundamentally grounded in creating and sustaining relationships" and then points to the ways in which the hallmarks of the Digital Revolution - immediacy, transparency, interactivity co-creativeness, integration and distribution - are returning us to a habit of social and public communication. (72, 49)

Last night as I was closing the windows in Firefox and calling it a night, a Facebook message from a friend in North Carolina appeared on the screen: "in labor...for real." That was a little after midnight there. In the hours that followed 20 people "liked" the post and 16 commented on it. This morning, about five hours later, came the post, "New baby!!!!!! Tired mommy but oh so excited!" with a beautiful picture of mother and baby and already the post has 16 likes and 18 comments.

Sharing photographs connects us to people and enhances relationships. The connectivity of social media where pictures of babies (graduations, gymnastics meets, tae kwon do belt tests, weddings, etc.) closes the distances whether it's seeing my friend's new baby in Asheville, a friend's daughter's wedding in Nashville or my niece's new haircut in California. This connectivity across large distances is a divergence from premodern times when community was perhaps defined as everyone within walking distance, but the desire to gather and share together in celebrations, and grief, is fundamental to our relationships.