Why do we Join Facebook?

I recently joined Facebook and I am surprised at how many of my contacts are already on. I find it very interesting at how ready people are in adopting this networking medium. I got curious about the parameters that bring us social networking. Here are my thoughts on Facebook:

• We spend so much time at school and at work that our lives seem to be so isolated from the folks we know. So we want to know what others are up to. We crave connections.
• We want others to know what we are up to as well, our thoughts and our feelings. We put up “Twitter-like” statements about ourselves when we “update our status”. We put up our photos. We write “notes” (blog entries) for our friends. Self expression? Sure - “Hello World! I am here. This Is who I am.”
• We want a sense of connective-ness with others, we like the feeling that there are others who interact with us as unique individuals. We write on each other's “walls”, we “poke” or “super poke” each other. We start up virtual aquariums and give each other fishes. Others give cupcakes, hatch eggs, give gifts, draw graffiti .. the list goes on.
• We like the convenience of it. We can login from anywhere (even on a mobile device) and feel the connection right away. No fuss, no hassles and geographically independent.
• We join groups. We want to be in touch. We want to be informed, involved.
• We (some of us really) want the world to know how many friends we have and who they are.
• We share photos of ourselves and of our friends. We share where we have been and what we have been doing. We get a thrill out of the social ritual of commenting on each other's pictures.

Through our electronic interactions with our friends and the information that we volunteer on its pages, are we putting too much of our identities on a publicly accessible media that is in fact a permanent record of our lives? What dangers does that entail? Is that a invitation for identity theft? How concerned should we be? Where shall we draw the line in defense of our privacy?

On the other hand, as the world trends towards bigger social networks and if we choose to remain “off the grid”, does that eventually put us at a social disadvantage? Will that “isolationist behavior” translates to real issues for our relationships and for our jobs one day?

You have a Tracking Device that will Tell the World Everything About You - Your Cell Phone

Bruce Sterling's "Dispatches From the Hyperlocal Future" is a great read. It prompted my thinking below about my cell phone and our likely future:

In the not-so-distant-future truly everyone will carry their cellphones everywhere. More people will use them to take and to send pictures and movies directly to the internet along with global positioning system ("GPS") information, showing their loved ones exactly where on the Google Map they are. May be our phones can be switched on for automatically taking and uploading pictures to a Twitter-like service every 15 minutes. Near field communications will be built in (see Suica), hence you can make most of your daily payments by waving your phones over sensors. Not only is there a running database of where you are, there's another with what you purchased and at what time of the day (see Octopus). Then again, it's not like they don't already know where you live and where you work, waving your phone over sensors allow you access to your apartment complex and to your office.

Governments and companies will use your cellphone number as a universal unique identifier of you. It is unique to you and since so many daily conveniences are built in, it's not like you will won't try to have it with you all the time anyway. Hey presto, an instant national identification card system, mostly likely with GPS built-in as well!

With or without GPS, phone companies can already track you down with cell tower information, but soon may be they can be more specific by building near field communications sensors on billboards and posters that you walk past everyday, looking to hookup temporarily with your cellphone. They can beam very specific marketing messages to your ears based on what they know about you via your cellphone. Also posters and city landmarks will have little square barcodes called "semapedia tags/ semacodes". You can read the tag using your cellphone camera and it go online and give you more information about the location and the product. It will also bind your cellphone (hence, you) to that product at that location and at that time. Who will have the most immediate database of who you are and where you have been, when and what strikes your fancy - how about your phone company? Phone companies will no longer be in a telecommunications business. They will be in a media / marketing business and unlike the Internet advertising business, phone companies know exactly who you are, how much you spend and much much more.

In the future people will want to pay not just to get away, but to get offline. They will rent time in quiet rooms with no connections, wired or wireless. They will buy Faraday cages, big and small to prevent general access to their cellphones and other tale-telling devices (what about the RFID tags on your clothes?). The extent of this line of thinking goes long and far. The gist of it is, we have already surrendered ourselves to a Universal Identification Card system that will tell the world everything about us, they sell it to you and they call it a cell phone. It won't work, you say, because anyone can take and use your cellphone? Well, have you seen those with biometric security built in? They will make it so convenient that you won't want to leave the house without it, more over, it doesn't look like you will be able to.

May be a company will come along and give us free cell phone services in exchange for all our information (Google Cell Phone?)?

Zen Meditation by Soap Bubbles

How do you rally a playground full of 3 year olds and focus them onto doing one thing together? Scream and play dead? Hand out ice-cream? Pay them cash?

Try blowing some soup bubbles.

As soup bubbles dance gaily through the air, the effect is nothing short of magical. Toddlers everywhere immediately drop what they are doing and chase through the park, laughing and chatting like a flock of sparrows. May be bubbles giggle together too, I wouldn't be able to tell. While toddlers give chase, others find and gather around the “source” (you) and watch with wide eyed wonder at the stream of bubbles being made.

What they allow you to see is the real secret to life. Witness the whole heartedness with which they drop everything and give chase. Their overwhelmingly infectious enthusiasm that tells you: there's nothing better in this world. In fact at this moment, the dancing bubbles are the ONLY thing in this world! This is what it means by to be living in the “now”.

If only we can be so focused and so sure of ourselves, we can accomplish anything we want. If only we can be so enthusiastic and happy about the things that we do, we can convince anyone about anything.

Next time we need a reminder of how we can be happy and accomplished in life, let's blow some soap bubbles in the park.

Note : Photo by Philipp Bunge