Who needs a bowling league anyway?

There is almost nothing that I agree with in Robert Putnam’s article “Bowling Alone,” however, I found the commentary on his article to be very engaging. Putnam makes sweeping claims about the “death of civic engagement” and particularly how it relates to women in the work force. The main point of his article is to address the fact that fewer Americans are joining organizations of any kind, although he seems to constantly be contradicting himself with so many “counterarguments.” Personally, I would like to ask Putnam what he thinks about civic engagement now, 10 years after having published his article. He predicted that the internet could not and would not resolve the issues surrounding the decline, nor would a nostalgia for the 50s, but could he ever have predicted how instantaneously interconnected we all would be? Maybe the civic engagement of today has evolved from what it once was, but it could be argued that we are more involved civically than ever before. Politicians are held accountable through twitter and voting can be promoted over facebook. Entire protests can be held through social media. It may not be civic engagement as Putnam once new it, but are Americans more politically and socially minded than they once were, even if they aren’t joining bowling leagues?