Facebook?
Sat, 07/02/2011 - 11:21pm
Is Facebook fracturing our society and compartmentalizing the vast potential of The Internet for knowledge and insight or is it virtually inspiring and empowering us by allowing us to be closer to the people and topics that most concern us? Anyone care to speculate on the future of Facebook? What do you think it'll be like in 10 or 15 years? 20 or 30 years?
Sun, 07/03/2011 - 1:29pm
#2
Yeah, it's entirely possible
Yeah, it's entirely possible that facebook will be the new friendster. But it also seems like they're doing a decent job of avoiding the pitfalls that friendster and myspace both fell into (lack of applications and overwhelming spam, respectively). I'd say facebook currently has two major complaints that I hear from people, that may or may not sink it, depending on how the google+ or whoever wants usurp them.
1. It's just a hole that people throw time down, meaninglessly. This is a complaint a lot of people have about facebook; that it just eats up their time with meaningless pseudo-interactions and self-indulgence. But I feel like that's sort of the nature of social networking and web 2.0 applications, that sort of constant vague social pressure to make sure you're both not missing what other people are doing and that other people aren't missing what you're doing. It's endemic to the medium. Unless the culture changes, I feel like that's not going to stop facebook.
2. There are privacy concerns. If it keeps being the case that every couple of months there's another outbreak of people freaking out about facebook selling off their personal information while other the next social networking site has no such concerns (though who knows how it would pay for itself without doing that) than there might be some kind of mass exodus. The privacy stuff could easily be facebook's achille's heel.
I personally, always find it kind of funny that people freak out about these privacy concerns. I mean, there's no information about you on facebook that you don't put there control, and they're selling this information to marketing companies, who want to use this information to sell you stuff. So, what's the worst case scenario? They get all this information about you and use it to tailor what they are advertising and how they advertising it so that you end up learning about products that you might actually be interested in buying? Frankly, that doesn't sound that bad.
Sun, 07/03/2011 - 7:45pm
#3
Facebook
I don't think it matters so much what will happen per se with Facebook, the company, but what the texture of our lives will be like in the future as a result of how these spaces for mediated human interaction evolve. It will be interesting to see what happens.
I'm not a heavy Facebooks user, but I do find it comes in handy for a certain kind of keeping in touch. I love some aspects of the Internet, and it's a better place to spend time than TV given that at least it is interactive.
But overall I feel that much has been lost when so much of our human interaction has shifted from face-to-face to online.
Just as one example, it used to be that if you wanted to learn something about music, photography, stamps, birds, coins, origami, knitting, whatever, that you had to get together at club meetings, conferences, workshops, with other like-minded people to share knowledge. Now, with information so readily available on the Internet, on YouTube for example, there is less of a burning need for people to get together in person. I recently met up with a group of magicians that has been getting together since the 1940s. It used to be that the group comprised people from their teens and upward, with the older, more experienced folks passing on their knowledge to the younger participants. Now the group consists mainly of a core of old-timers--people in their fifties into their eighties. Younger folks come rarely. There could be many reasons for this, but younger people seem to be turning more to online sources.
To me this represents a loss on many levels, but mainly I think it has an alienating affect. I don't think that the quality of our lives is better when everyone is sitting at home looking at a screen rather than communicating face-to-face.
However, two people have mentioned to me recently that there is some sort of backlash brewing--that people are starting to reach out for more in-person interactions through different activities, etc. And, I have always thought that the music/songwriting scene was encouraging in how so many people seem to enjoy the social aspect of it as much as the music. So, maybe some kind of balance is in the offing.
Well, I think the point I am making is represented very well by the fact that I am typing this rather than discussing it with someone in person! See you soon, I hope.
Thu, 07/07/2011 - 9:33am
#4
Google+
I just checked this out Jeannie and I think you might be right about Google+ . I just took a tour of it and I think Google+ sort of solves some of those problems that you were talking about Chris. The way that you are able to prioritize groups with the "cricles" option helps you avoid having to look at (get sucked into) content that you don't want. They also manage to integrate a lot of real life applications with the on line experience to sort of make "the real world" a bit more attractive. This is refreshing to me. I hate to sound like an ad but Google+ already looks more like a social networking tool for the real world vs. a replacement for it. Now I just have to break down and get an Android. My prediction is that the future is all about Google+ and Twitter. Goodbye witty Facebook status updates.
http://www.google.com/+/demo/
Facebook will go the way of MySpace due to Google+. Then something new, bigger & better will come along taking the title from Google+, and so on & so forth til we go back to actually talking to one another & snail mail, etc. in a retro move. Then we'll go back to more things like MySpace & FB & etc.
To answer that age old question asked by Billy Preston oh so many years ago, will it go round in circles? Yup, it always does. You know, the ole "what goes around comes around" type 'o thang.
Now, the really BIG question is will Barry Bliss ever join any of them, and if he does, will he still delete his posts?
Yes, its me. You may now genuflect.