The good thing about the old days of TV with 3 or 4 channels and a few on UHF was that it gave us something to rally around as a nation in front of the TV fire. I recall calling friends to remind them that there was something on TV that they should watch. Before having the ability to purchase it on videotape, or perhaps record it--and aside from the reruns, it was a completely missed opportunity. Now we just share links, but we never really watch together--if at all--so there are now myriad missed opportunities. The good thing about "zooming" together is it is that interactive "cool" campfire--what perhaps was the original intent of YouTube and webcams. What we now see on screens is what TV was meant to be. It took an Internet to make that happen. In the future, it will take another innovation to consummate social media. Social media doesn't have any campfire in it--the way TV had. It's interesting that people put screens above fireplaces, so teleconferencing in that configuration is a Usonian "cool campfire".
Universals:
classification of space
clusters
coalitions
collective identities
cooking
facial communication
folklore
future, attempts to predict
identity, collective
self as neither wholly passive nor wholly autonomous
socialization
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