In the beginning there was the telephone party line and the ‘nommer asseblief girlie’ was the font of all gossip in the town as she listened in on everyone’s conversations.
Then telephone number routing became ‘automatic’ and it became increasingly more difficult for technicians to listen in to all conversations so we got a semblance of privacy back.
Fast forward a couple of years to dial up internet connections. This ‘giant leap’ in technology made it pretty difficult for nefarious people (read marketing companies) to crack our walls of privacy.
ADSL literally exploded the numbers of people on the internet and introduced a salivating marketer determined to control the world’s information, break down the privacy walls and use that information for greed. After all, it is always so much easier to use and sell information that other people create.
Our friend Google did a fairly good job of amassing information.
Whilst Google was amassing info and the marketers were trying to break the walls of privacy, the netizens of the world established and joined forums which ensured a fairly decent amount of privacy and anonomynity for those who needed a place to be anonymous or show a facet of their personality.
Remember that we all wear different hats and behave in certain ways that are tailored to our ‘audiences’ in real life – children, parents, friends, work colleagues etc.
For a developer, the ultimate web site is one that provides a structure for people to willingly contribute their own content which you as the developer will then own.
Ja ja ja you know where I am going with this – Facebook, or Group Sex for Amoebas.
I still find it mind blowing that Zuckerberg built his site on what was basically the stolen content of student profiles at Harvard University – I hope that you are contributing a heap of money to your Alma Mater Markie boy!
Anyway, let us have a quick look at the pitfalls of Facebook for an adult:
- You have to sign up using your real name.
- You have to stick to a morally correct, straight laced adult persona and show no human traits such as smoking, drinking, sex, illnesses or anything else which could be construed as undesirable in any company. These drone like traits will ensure that you do not get fired as the result of an anonymous e-mail complaining about you ‘promoting alcohol’ as a Facebook image on, what you thought was a private page, shows you holding a glass of wine in one hand and a glass of beer in the other.
See: Did the Internet Kill Privacy? to see just what I am talking about. In a nutshell, Ashley Payne, a public high school English teacher in Georgia, USA was given a choice – resign or be suspended after a ‘parent’ complained about an image of Ashley holding alcohol published in Ashley’s ‘private’ space on Facebook.
Come on now – would you give someone you just met private images of yourself for safekeeping? Then why allow someone you have never met complete control of all your images?
Remember that even if you delete your Facebook profile it is never gone forever.
This is one more reason why I still struggle with this whole ‘friends’ terminology – how can you be my ‘friend’ if you have never been to my house, never had a beer with me at the Yacht Club and never even shook my hand. How shallow and terminally stupid is the world that people would want to be my ‘friend’ based on a flat one sided dimension as presented on Facebook?
Alan Straton
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A friends is just a stranger you do not know … Er … A Facebook friend is just a stange person you do not know …
He he …
Hmm – yes and you must be very careful what you say, as your spouse may just find out that you have other ladies visiting you on the sly. Easiest way to destroy a relationship is when the one adulterous person writes about the affair – and the cheating spouse is not aware of what is being written and boasted about on fb. The hard done by spouse can read exactly what is going on, and both guilty parties are unaware that the whole world can see what is happening. Some people are just so vain and stupid that they spend their life twittering and fb-ing – thinking that others are interested in their inane shallow lifes. STUPID!