ABSTRACT
In the "era of digital media", an advanced stage of modernity, it is a separation that is fleshing itself out more rapidly than ever. This influence of digital media is not one of initiation or creation but rather, more modestly, of clarification and stimulation of a trend in distinguishing between them that was already long underway. No doubt digital technology has dashed the old ontological views of society: the speed, depth and breadth of connection and feedback to the self it enables for its users is astonishing. In political life people tend to be pushed apart into a relation of mutual exclusion. At a dinner party a political argument breaks out: some of the dinner guests dig into camps while others wait tensely on the side-lines for it to blow over. Appearances to the contrary, political life is part of social life, but social life is by no means all politics.
