The sheer horribleness of Facebook’s Timeline should creep you out.
Ever since I posted that new blogpost for jrm4.com, Facebook’s been making me reenter my password and do more captchas, like it knows what I’m up to. Firing back now 
First, let’s get the jokes out of the way. Yes, it’s the new/old MySpace. Yes, it breaks just about every other good rule of eye-catching web design. Yes, it looks like the 90′s threw up all over your browser, only with more monotone. But, as much as we’d love to attribute this to incompetence, Facebook is far too important to shareholders and other interested parties for “Timeline” to be merely a mistake. Others have alluded to this as well, but the Timeline thing seems to be an “800 lb gorilla in the room” move. That is, ease of use and convenience be damned, we now own you and your life — as we are able to conveniently show you, year by year.
I know, I’m a broken record on this one, but I will keep repeating it. We all need to start thinking about alternatives — Facebook provides some cool services, but the vast amount of personal information it has been able to vacuum up makes it too dangerous of a force. Please, let’s all consider the alternatives, such as Diaspora. I’m well aware that alternatives have a long way to go — but I also remember not too long ago when MySpace was NEVER going to be dethroned either.
Why I do what I do.
With Christmas loot to blow, I took the plunge and purchased an ereader; the e-ink kind. (Very easy on the eyes, I love it.) Naturally, I shot on over to Project Gutenberg to pick up a few titles. Some Nietzsche, Cory Doctorow, Don Quixote, The Art of War, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, etc. Because, why not. Quick click, download, and done.
That’s when I got it again, a chill down my spine, but the good kind. Familiar. May I never be desensitized.
It’s a little reminder that we are living in the most exciting time in history.
A long time ago, I read a science fiction story whose main plot escapes me, but what I do remember is that it involved one man going on a very very long trip through space. It would would take hundreds, maybe thousands, of years. Technology had solved the longevity question, along with a more interesting one — the issue of how he would spend that time in transit. Not to worry, because onboard was a computer that was loaded with a copy of every book, every movie, every song, every cultural artifact known to earthlings at the time. He would be informed and entertained for years.
The story simultaneously excited and disappointed me. I was first exhilirated by the thought of such a library, and after, saddened — because I was certain that such a thing was impossible.
As they say, that was then, and this is now.
Not that she can read yet, but right now, today, I can literally put a library in my daughter’s hands. A new book to read every night,if she wanted, for 15 years. In a $100 device (plus $10 for an 8 gb memory card) that roughly conforms to the weight and dimensions of a bathroom tile.
Fortunately, I’m also in a position to be able pay the licensing fees for that particular, unfortunately large, subset of books that are presently encumbered with copyright restrictions.
But what if I (or you) couldn’t? What then?
Well, it’s pretty well known now. Practically, it’s possible (and often easier) to obtain these works for no cost at all — through channels such as Bittorrent, filelockers, and other p2p methods. Roughly all of the beautiful, amazing, intelligent, life-changing artifacts that mankind has produced are available, for free, right now, to anyone in possession of a device that accesses the Internet-at-large.
This, despite what many would say, is the GOOD part about the Internet.
Again, a genuine question. Would you allow “dead-tree” copyright laws to get in the way of your kid’s (possibly limitless) potential for learning and growth?
What saddens me today is that most discussions of this — an irreversible condition that isn’t merely a part of the internet, but instead, the very core of its function — tend to devolve into a nitpick-fest loaded with dated concepts like “piracy” and “incentives.” — as if the thirst for knowledge and satisfaction and entertainment were the attentional equivalent of flu symptoms; human quirks to be managed (and perhaps exploited) via market-approved products.
No.
We are in the midst of mankind’s greatest achievement to date. The connection of all minds, of all valuable human creation is not a thing that should be taken lightly. It is not a thing to always be “monetized,” and it sure as hell should not be criminalized.
It is to be encouraged, grown, and celebrated, and frankly, it’s why I do what I do.