Wednesday.....Culture.....Facebook Wednesday?

Maybe I should just change Wednesday....Culture to Wednesday....Facebook for changes seem to a weekly, even daily, item for Mark Zuckerberg's empire. To recount a little bit here, I wrote a few blogs on the Facebook phenomenon lately. I've had concerns on social networking for some time. One change that I read about only a few minutes ago is that chat conversations can no longer be deleted, for Facebook removed the delete button. Facebook users are wondering why and they are not very happy about it. The second bit of news was much bigger. Facebook and Microsoft's Bing search engine are becoming intertwined. They will share personal data which brings privacy matters into the picture but Facebook responds by saying that their users can opt out of the special service if they wish. This service will enable Bing users to see "friend's" particularly likes or dislikes on anything from "movies to restaurants." And this may just be the beginning of new services, say the partners. Microsoft has that other monolith Google in its sites, and as one analyst put it "Google, Facebook battle for future of the web." Zuckerberg chose Bing, for now, for "They are really the underdog here" and "because of that they're incentivised to go all out and innovate." In yet another piece of news, according to Fox News, "A privacy watchdog has uncovered a government memo that encourages federal agents to befriend people on a variety of social networks, to take advantage of their readiness to share--and spy on them," The narcissism, the pursuit of the trivial and the super-willingness to taste every grape dangled over the mouth is only part of the problem with this juggernaut of technological innovation in social networking. There is a tapeworm growing in this frenzy for technological gimmicks. Every gimmick is a tentacle, every hour spent on it is literally wasted when one considers that the nation's code of ethics is in critical condition. Will this one day become a cyber-bulimia where one throws up and then waits only long enough to catch a breath before devouring more? The following is but one example of the mindset of those who are drunk on invention, power and an accumulating of money, an accumulation that never seems to end. The Wall Street Journal did a piece, titled "Technology=Salvation," this past weekend on Peter Thiel after interviewing him. Thiel was an early investor in Facebook and is reported to presently own about 3% of the company. It begins with Thiel's opinion that except for the Internet and computers, technological progress today is a myth. According to the Journal, he is a macro investor along the lines of George Soros and bets on the direction of the world's markets. Herein is part of the ethics problem shared by many other professions in that "right and wrong" is an extinct animal and law is simply a rule meant to be challenged for personal gain. Life is a game. According to Mr. Thiel, the national debt is not a problem, it could even double over the next 20 years, as long as wealth is also created. It doesn't matter how much you owe for you are making good money...but circumstances change and by that time its way too late to act responsibly. Mr Thiel acknowledges this, sort of, as he describes those who lost big in the sub-prime mess as "betting...on the productivity gains to make ...debts affordable." He hit on the crux of the problem, but he promoted the cause and not a solution for he laments that there are not more companies as great as Facebook and admits that it is "dangerous" to be part of such a successful company when other areas are not succeeding. This is maybe the understatement of the year. Corporations often buy other corporations, not to improve their product, but to find themselves on top when, and if, the economy settles out. It's an untenable theorem. Facebook, and other behemoths, will come to a point where they will not be able to afford it, and when they do, their employees will suffer and those dependent upon them will be left out in the wind to dry, or, could Facebook ever be too big to fail? This is the present administration's position, throw the money at bailouts and stimulus, just tax enough to be able to pay for it, and hope that world events do not thwart the plan. One unforeseen problem... the people are not going to be taxed to pay for the megalomania dreams of superegos. The welfare of the people does not come into play with Facebook execs, only the desires of the people that they are more than happy to prescribe steroids to. Mr. Thiel was portrayed in the recent movie on Facebook, The Social Network, as the man who, as the Journal article puts it, "sets the ball rolling toward cutting out Facebook's allegedly victimized co-founder Eduardo Saverin." This was the mindset of Facebook, is the mindset of much of corporate America, and will be the week ethical link in the chain that brings the house of cards down. Throughout the article's interview, it seems that Mr. Thiel is trying to convince himself that if only we apply all our resources towards technological growth, the macro problem will be solved. He seems to hold up the innovation of Facebook as a guiding principle to what is needed in all of corporate America. He is flailing his arms in the wind and the author of the article, Holman W. Jenkins Jr., spots it as he concludes the piece with "perhaps it really does fall to some dystopian science fiction writer to tell us what such a world will be like-when nations are unravelling even as a cyber-nation called "Facebook" is becoming the most populous on the planet." It has been my contention that Facebook is an extended vacation in the maturing process of a people. It is changing, not only the way people spend their free time, but the way they think, for a linear thought process built on reading words is being supplanted by a image-centered process that only reads short summaries, for there are so many topics to be browsed.