In the beginning, there was email, and the User saw it, and it was good. Then the User said, "Let there be a way to instantly message my friends in a back-and-forth conversation." And so, the programmers huffed and puffed, and lo and behold, IM was born, along with many platforms to support it. AIM, ICQ, Yahoo!, Trillian, the possibilities were endless. And AIM begat Skype, and the User saw that it was good.
But over in another part of the Internet-o-Sphere, another User wished for fame, for glory, and perhaps for a little drama. And so the programmers brought forth forums. But no, this was too anonymous! People could be total assbags to each other with no real consequences! And so came livejournal. Now, you could have friends! And then came friends-locked posts, and special lists and filters!
But the User was a little ADD, and livejournal posts tended to be tiny novels. And so came Myspace. Now THIS was networking! Pictures and friends and... sparkles? No, no, no! (cried the User). Give me something clean, something simple. Something even my mom can use!
And so was born Facebook. And everybody joined. Everybody. And the User who remembered email and forums and secret chat rooms said: WAIT A MINUTE! Where did my anonymity go? I used to have a private life that nobody else could touch! I used to enjoy the solitude of a life seperate from the real world! I guess you just can't please some people.
That brand of privacy is simple. Don't put it on the internet.
ReplyDeleteWhat I find is that more and more people have the direct dwindling attention span and consideration for their fellow human in proportion the dwindling of an internet interraction.
At least when people were blogging there was often some kind of thought going into what was being put up. Ideas might actually be shared. At this point on Planet Facebook, the amount of attention anyone pays is the length of a poorly structured sentence. Its becoming the norm, alas.