It is a phenomenon that defies comprehension, much like Twitter, Texting, and e-mail via cell phone. However, Facebook and Twitter share something in common the other two do not: A public display of some of the most inane and inconsequential moments of a person's life, as if picking bellybutton lint was an activity that captured the minds of the masses. Or, worse, revelations about one's personal life that never should have been made public.
Alas, I was a Facebook member for a few months and accumulated 100+ friends. A few were real, some were mere internet associates, some were long-lost acquaintances who only wanted to add my name to their list...and a very, very few were actually fun; a two long-lost cousins and a high school classmate.
Very quickly I found that posting anything of interest on Facebook such as an op-ed from The New York Times was the equivalent of writing in invisible ink--a few stalwart supports notwithstanding. On the other hand, posting some personal such as burping after a sumptuous dinner received comments never ending.
Over time, my primary response to Facebook was boredom. I never signed on and only checked it out when I got some e-mail alerting me to a post. And let us not discuss the unconscionable privacy violations resulting in very fat bank accounts for the Facebook big wigs.
So I deleted everything about me and discovered how to delete my account. I've not noticed any withdrawal symptoms or longings to see what my numerous friends were up to.
But Facebook is becoming as ubiquitous as Google; how may sites can you log onto with a FB account? And Google is clearly out to the rule the world...if Apple doesn't beat them to it.
It's the illusion of intimacy I find most disturbing, the false confidence that one can actually know something important about others simply by learning when they get up, if they've been productive, in what airport they're stuck. I suppose in a society where suspicion and mistrust seem to reign and intimacy grows increasingly difficult, FB provides a measure of reassurance that we are in touch.
Touch. Who was it that wrote about high tech/high touch, that the more technology invaded our lives, the more real interpersonal contact was necessary to maintain one's balance? I know a young married woman who sits with her husband every evening on the couch texting friends--and sometimes each other. She's bright, articulate, competent but is she touch deprived?
The lack of intimacy is not to be confused with the subtle loss we will suffer at the hands of Kindle, IPad, and all the other book destroying technologies. Recently a friend came over who shares an interest in history, and we went through my library, me giving him books--physical things--that I'd thought he'd like. He held them, opened them, read the inside leafs and back. I suppose I could have called up the book on some screen, but the touch would be gone. It makes me happy to look through all my books, even those I'd never read again, in a way I can't imagine scrolling through a list of hundreds of books stored on some device.
However, as Doonesbury so brilliantly demonstrated, what to me is a loss is partly a function of my years. (Used without permission because I couldn't figure out how to get it, so apologies if necessary to Mr. Trudeau.)
By now most have read the articles claiming that multitasking actually reduces both comprehension and contemplation, the latter essential to intellectual and emotional discovery. Perhaps something will be gained to compensate for those losses. Perhaps not.
Oh, I know, my blathering isn't new; I recognize nothing I've said hasn't been said before. But it's my goddamn blog, and I'll whine if I want to.
In Jameson Veritas
