Quote of the Day:
"Why would I want to waste my time on Facebook when I still haven't read Keats' Endymion?"
The Guardian continues its social networking bash-athon with an examination of Facebook's neocon, uber-capitalist core.
The Guardian continues its social networking bash-athon with an examination of Facebook's neocon, uber-capitalist core.
posted by dodeckahedron at 23:18
2 Comments:
i saw yesterday that most of my friends - and me - had shared that story on facebook. so clearly it struck a chord. yet we're all still there. are we masochists or freedom fighters? is there such a thing as a non-scary social network? i wonder if the way forward is to split into smaller and smaller ones, like ravelry... perhaps if we had the tech tools to build our own networks (a CLAM network, for example?) we might not need to worry about privacy. i also enjoyed the thing you linked the other day (that was you, right?) by stephen fry about the human need, when faced with limitless possibility, to immediately section it off into factions. i guess space is just too scary for us!
I find the human occupation of space that Fry talks about really interesting, and also this fear of exposure we have.
Personally, I feel that the privacy aspect is somewhat silly to worry about - more information can gleaned about me in other parts of the web, so I shouldn't complain.
A non-scary social network is probably impossible! This scary-ness also involves the amount of distraction they induce.
Maybe the way forward would be to make them more creatively productive like you say - knitting or book clubs. Although they are pretty retro and elitist social solutions, when there are so many possibilities..
To have such a finely assembled and visible network in itself is pretty unique to our generation. I can't help but think these tools would be more useful for older people with limited social interaction, seeing as current patterns of usage mimic older forms which wouldn't necessarily alienate them.
I wonder how many 70+ year olds use Facebook?
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