I just joined Facebook today. I've been holding off for a really long time (Has it been years? It certainly feels like it...) because Facebook has made me nervous from beginning. First, it came up from the kids... It was originally designed and first used by high school and college kids to gossip. That made me not entirely trust Facebook. How could I find a use for the social networking tool of teens? Then there's the fact that you can really only have one Facebook identity with any depth at all unless you truly have a multiple personality disorder. This effectively brings an end to the "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog" era, and into a new era of transparency. On Facebook, your user name is not "MissSexyPants801." It's your real God-given (well, Mom- and Dad-given) name. And anyone, whether it's the government, a stalker, a loan shark, or a malevolent space alien, can find you, find out who your friends are, find out what you're into, when your birthday is, what events you're going to, etc.
So there's transparency on Facebook and there's (necessarily) a level of trust that emerges. I trust my friends, and I trust their friends. And my friends trust their friends' friends. And so on. I think this is, for the most part, a positive thing. But it roots us in who we are and our history. And I think it changes the way we grow up and evolve. A few times in my life, I have sort of rolled the dice, picked up and moved, or started fresh with a whole new group of friends and a whole new identity, to some extent. I can think of a few examples: Moving at the age of 8 to Pottstown from Phoenixville, moving to New York to go to NYU, moving to Ireland, going to Burning Man. That's four, I think. But Facebook crosses the beams. You are who you are who you are. Or, perhaps more accurately, you are who your friends are. If character used to be destiny, in 2009 your network is your destiny. Or something like that.
There is no dipping your toe in Facebook. This is a paradigm shift, and you can't just sort of be there. If you're there, you're there. By diving in, you make a commitment to put your name and face and friends and facts out there for anyone else who puts themselves out there to search and see and comment on. So now I'm in it, and what does it look like, 10 hours later and with 100 friends? Well, it's virtual reality, for real, with perhaps less sex. Who needs to go out and have events? All I need is an event invite. Who needs real friends? I've got Facebook friends. I write on your wall, you write on my wall, and we while away the hours. It reminds me of the last Matrix movie, when you get to the heart, meet the architect, see the man behind the curtain, and it all just looks like pure white light. Or Wim Wenders' Until the End of the World, when we can see our own dreams, what's inside our heads refined into images, and it's irrepressively addictive.
Again, this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just a fundamental shift, and it requires a commitment from every participant, a commitment to participate. And I can see that this is the future. This is incredibly efficient, and equalizing. Hierarchy fades away, and I can friend anyone in an instant and they can friend me, and we reduce the entire world to one flat level playing field. It's amazing, it's liberating, and it's addictive. This is how we will organize ourselves in the future. This is how our government should work. And probably will.
But this all requires a level of optimism about people and our future that I find truly encouraging. The movement to Facebook, even in the face of continuing economic collapse shows that people will always find places where energy is abundant, and look to explore that. Our social and economic system is in the process of transforming itself completely. It is, and will continue to be, painful. But I think Facebook is part of what comes next, what society looks like after we've burned off all of our sins and excesses of the last 50 or so years.
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