A New Meme

Today is the 5th anniversary of Facebook. It surpassed MySpace a while ago. I forget how many 100's of millions use it (or at least created accounts). My wife and I jumped into it recently because a lot of our friends are on it (3/4 of the neighborhood to be exact). It provides a way to keep in casual touch with people. It is good for relationships where you don't see or talk to the person; for keeping in touch with the trivia of a life that is across the globe; for building superficial relationships with people that you might otherwise not ever meet.

It is NOT good for building depth; developing meaningful relationships or actually touching the life of someone. It is however, the prevailing meme of our childrens' generation.

Casual, near-real time communication with many people simultaneously has reshaped the world. It has devalued absolutes (like truth, right-and-wrong), encouraged superficiality and created what for a lack of a better term I will call the hive mentality. Opinions are formed, discussed, codified and disseminated at the speed of light. Relationships (casual though they are) are formed and dissolved multiple times over the course of a month. No one will commit to an idea, decision or original thought without passing it through this network (hard to justify calling it a neural network as it is almost mindless).

We are becoming as bright as the dullest member of our personal network. It is easier to text, post or email than it is to actually think. We are becoming less of a people and more of a collection of insects.

Welcome to the future....