[Air-L] With Friends Like Facebook ....

[Charles Ess]

> If colleagues have not come across the highly critical perspective of Facebook
> by journalist Tom Hodgkinson in the Guardian newspaper (UK) earlier this week
> they may find it of interest.
>  
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

What an interesting piece!  Raises all kinds of compelling ethical and
political questions ...

I'd also be interested in knowing similar background information on such
places as MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn, etc.

And: it wouldn't surprise me (unfortunately) if 90+ % of the observations
regarding political ideology, etc., are true.  Still, it seems only to fair
to ask if the folk portrayed have anything to say from their side of the
story?

However all that turns out - perhaps Niel Postman had it right in 1984: we
are in love with the technologies of our enslavement ...

Or, to be provocative, did the Matrix get it right: we're confined to a pod
of virtual existence, with (more or less) nowhere to go?

Should we be thinking about pulling our profiles?

grumpily (I truly wish I didn't have to _think_ about all of this! ...
smile)
- charles ess