• by Sean , January 28, 2007

A tragic thing happened Saturday night. The life of a fellow student was claimed in an accident just seven blocks away from our campus. I know this, because I got the e-mail.

“[DN|BREAKING NEWS] BSU golfer dies in Riverside Avenue accident.” This came just over 5 hours after the actual accident. A few years ago, we wouldn’t have learned about this until Monday’s paper.

It is times like this that fascinate me about the infiltration of the World Wide Web and supporting technologies into our daily lives. I start to think about how the flow of information has changed with the introduction of a blazingly fast, new, and popular medium into the mix.

You’ve undoubtedly read my fellow bloggers talk about Facebook … and how addicting it can be. Like MySpace, it has become the prime digital social networking utility – connecting us to one another via the information superhighway. The most interesting part to me, however, is the how Facebook has changed the way we grieve classmates who have passed.

The accident happened around 6:30pm. As soon as 9:09pm … friends of the student who died already begin to post messages in remembrance. Other students can log on and see the messages, and talk to each other during the difficult time.

This isn’t anything new for MySpace. In fact, when you die, there’s a special place where your MySpace profile goes. It’s called MyDeathSpace. It’s pretty morbid.

I’m just glad you can’t be killed online. Yet.