Facebook can be seen as a network of words. Images, of course, are present, but are usually accompanied by text, and in general, it is a language-dominated site. After all, “humans are language animals” (Tuan, 1991, p.694).
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Tuan goes on to say that “language is a force that all of us use every day to build, sustain and destroy” (p.694), literally implying that as humans we create our reality by thinking, speaking and writing – in other words by applying language. (I would argue that there are other more powerful forces within us doing much of the reality-creation, but certainly agree that language plays a major role.) This notion is supported explicitly in the lecture, when Dr Ariella Van Luyn mentions: “Language creates it's own reality.”
Let's look, then, at Facebook from this perspective. Is it a place, open to human (and only human, predominately mental) exploration, built out of a fundamental desire to communicate, share information and develop relationships? If so, then perhaps the structure we have created to perform these functions, while fulfilling the intention to some degree, actually overshadows the original intention in much the same way that theories in social science “can be so highly structured that [they] seem to exist in [their] own right, to be almost “solid,” and thus able to cast (paradoxically) a shadow over the phenomena [they] are intended to illuminate” (p.686).
In order to effectively communicate and share on a human level, some “decreation” may be necessary - “we are often under moral obligation to...decreate” (p.693). How about a little healthy tearing down of the profit-focused economic structures that keep our social networks full of spam and so overwhelmingly devoid of simple truth, and genuine warmth?
References
Tuan, Y. (1991). Language and the making of place: A narrative-descriptive approach. Annals of the association of American geographers. 81(4), 684-696.
Van Luyn, A. (2013). BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, week 5 lecture. [podcast]. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au
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