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Karl Marx did not predict this. He predicted estrangement from labor - from being emotionally dissociated from the results of your work. He didn't predict being estranged from (or worse, because of) your non-work interactions with others through media.

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He absolutely predicted that. According to Marx, in capitalism, relations between people become predominated by their relations to capital. It is not a separate phenomenon.

Really? HN didn't become Facebook, even though HN is tied to the capitalist class just as much as Facebook is. I have exactly the same relation to capital when I use HN as when I use Facebook (or would, if I used Facebook), and yet the alienation is much higher with Facebook.

Marx didn't predict this. McLuhan did. HN is a different medium from Facebook (and deliberately so).

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