"Invisible"

If Shirky is right, and we’re headed to a period where social media tools like YouTube, Flickr, and social networks like Facebook become “invisible,” what’s the impact on things you spend money on as consumers? Books? Movies? Music?

When Shirky refers to social media networks becoming "invisible" he is refering that to the day that these will become standards in the way in which we communicate just like the telephone and the fax have become invisible. In the book, Skirky, asks which came first, the fax or the web? Someone who is 35years and older would not have a problem answering this question, but someone from my generation has had both technologies since we were born. This is what makes a technology invisible. As to what the impact is on things we spend money on as consumers such as books, movies, and music I'm not really sure. Everything has become more and more available at the click of a button on the internet. You can watch movies on hulu.com, read books, and listen to music at pandora.com. Does this mean we will stop interacting face-to-face in the future because everything that is of interest will be avilable on the web? I hope not, but like Shirky said, "we have lost the clean distinctions between communications media and broadcast media. As social media like MySpace now scale efforlessly between a community of a few and an audience of a few million, the old habit of treating communications tools like the phone differently from broadvast tools like television no longer make sense."