Is it wrong to consider ‘Facebook’
as a map serving a specific purpose, for as we know every map advances an interest (Wood,Kaiser&Abramms, 2006.p.4)
and Facebook is much more than a way of keeping in contact with a few old
relatives or acquaintances it provides “way-points” on the map of your life.
When prompted to join and
with a few small clicks of a keyboard, you begin profiling your life to a
machine or website by entering basic information such as name, age, location,
and detailing your interests, schools and any other details you wish to include
hoping that someone will instantly admit you as their friend or ask you to join
a school reunion or some other self serving page until it seems the world knows
you.
The ability to quickly find
others who have a connection to you brings the kind of ‘small world’ theory and
six degrees of separation too close for comfort, as Watts and Strogatz offered
“social networks within which we live possess a structure that truly make for a
small world”(Buchanan,2002)
Over 4000 years ago the
powerful Egyptian kings employed thousands of workers to complete monuments and
adorned them with pictorial evidence of their ‘rulers’ powerful existence
through hieroglyphics but today millions of workers freely portray ‘themselves’
on a daily basis through emoticons or what I believe to be the hieroglyphics of
the modern world making “Mark Zuckerberg” the most powerful ruler of the modern
age.
The digital camera and smart
phone allows the Facebook user to upload instantly an impressive array of “look
at me” type scenarios something an Egyptian stonemason would have taken a year
to complete but the underlying reasoning is the same, that of having a need to
be seen.
History tells us that all
civilisations and rulers come to an end and so the demise of Facebook is imminent
but for a brief moment our own profile picture will adorn a website archived to
the web museum of the future as the profile of Ramesses II is currently
weathering in Cairo.
Wood, Denis. Ward L.Kaiser
and Bob Abramms. 2006. Seeing through
maps. Oxford. New International.
Mark
Buchanen. 2002. Nexus. New York. Norton and Co
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