Online is a different kind of 'social' - connecting, exchanging information in public. Although each 'social' interaction is a thread, the participants are not working within the context of the conversation. Being present online is not a social activity as much as a pre-social activity: forming, testing, aligning and finding common threads. This applies to all digital presence advertisement networks - email, chat, social, mobile. Through the beguiling ease and simplicity of being this early kind of social, the illusion sets in - that this is all it is to be social. Digitized packets of emotion emerge in society, but don't necessarily build society, as much as they aid in building a marketplace - a market for sharing information once thought the domain of one-on-one conversations. They help to democratize conversations. In that sense, digital emotions are a welcome addendum to the normal channels of building one's society, identity and purpose. But
On the infrastructure behind all things