A long piece by William Deresiewicz here traces the way in which the idea of friendship has evolved, from ancient times right up to the present. It's an interesting story he tells, but the whole is marred by the note it strikes of everything having gone to the dogs. The first two paragraphs set the tone: the specificity of friendship lost by being absorbed into every other kind of relation; the depth of real friendship attenuated through its transformation into a set of mere Facebook connections.
I don't like to seem pedantic, but I'd be willing to bet that most people with a Facebook account still know what a real friend is, a friend in the world, as opposed to an internet hook-up. Yes, the latter can also put or keep you in touch with genuine friends, and you can be Facebook 'friends' with actual friends as well as with people you hardly know. But the claim that the bond and the qualities of friendship are falling into disuse because we're all being taken over by a technology that distances us from one another, even while purporting to bring us closer, is one that should be viewed, I think, with scepticism. (Via.)