I could not agree more with this assessment. I observe the same patterns in my circles, including what he said about LinkedIn.
Facebook these days is past its peak and appears to mostly be sustained by a very young crowd posting party pictures. I believe Facebook’s problem is that it is not evolving into a true social platform quickly enough. It insists on making the rules of the game.
Google, on the other hand, is far better positioned to capitalize on society’s increasing digital interconnectedness. Its services enable a more meaningful and productive communication. Google’s variety of diverse yet integrated products makes it easier to maintain very tailored social connections. Use Picasa to share pictures with family; Google Phone to call home from abroad; Docs to share the bike trip packing list; etc. etc. etc.
Compared to the scope of Google’s offerings, Facebook looks like an over-engineered Rolodex: it stores your list of “friends” and gives you the ability to indiscriminately spam them with your “likes” and baby pictures. I personally believe that all this talk of Facebook competing with Google on any level is pretty crazy.
A couple of words on Twitter. It’s a purpose-specific tool, and it fills the important niche of instant mass-dissemination of information. Twitter is not trying to be all things to all people, and I believe it will continue to grow.
I started with one thought and ended with an attempt to analyze something slightly different. Coming back to the article I linked above, social networking on the grand scale is still in the initial stages of entering the effective mainstream. The whole concept still depends heavily on the entertainment value for the end-user. We should not expect social networking to make the society more networked than it already is in absolute terms. The company that adds the most tangible value to people’s everyday life will end up with the biggest chunk of our future digitized souls. And it ain’t going to be Facebook; as least not the way it looks today.
From the Daily Dish today:
And the vast wealth of an entire continent, unleashed by freedom’s flourishing, gave this land of liberty real and awesome global power, which it used to vanquish the two great evils of the last century – Nazism and Communism. This is the noble legacy so many now seek to perpetuate, with good intentions and benign hearts, despite the disastrous and costly interventions of the last decade.
And that, my friends, was the final straw that led me to unsubscribe from Andrew Sullivan’s RSS feed. It’s epic, I know.
I have enjoyed his honest attempts at ‘small-c conservatism’, despite his weak spot for Sarah Palin and subscribing openly to an organized religion. But this “America-won-the-WWII-and-then-brought-down-the-Soviet-Union” crap is too much to bear.
Two good things about exorbitant income and sales taxation in Quebec.
- It provides a strong dis-incentive to senseless consumption.
- The flip side to giving half of your salary to the government is that you get that much more back if you contribute to RRSPs.
A fleeting but important point here is that rich people are better off in any tax regime for one simple reason. Rich people are rich because they make money, and not because they spend it. Powerful people are influential because they acquire power, and not because they use it. People who have strong social bonds and successful personal relationships live happily because they give, and not because they take. We should never confuse these causes and effects.
So I decided to take this gym thing more seriously. Four times a week, 6 supersets of bicep curls and dips, dumbbell presses and ab crunches. Better diet – lots of protein. Nothing ground-breaking, just more consistency than before.
Due to the hectic logistics of the day, I found that the easiest way to squeeze gym time in and control excuses is to go later at night. Surprisingly, the 10-minute walk through the dark empty streets of this gentile neighborhood is turning out to be the highlight of this whole experience. It’s a time to be outdoors, listen to music, breathe in fresh air, reflect on the day and make plans for tomorrow. I am fortunate to be surrounded by social connections and family warmth these days more than ever before; and moments of solitude and reflection come at a premium.
A variety of movements, environments and experiences is good for the psyche.
Really getting used to the Kindle. The ‘e-ink’ screen is very easy on the eyes, and the device is so much more comfortable than than holding an actual book. The ability to highlight and save passages on the go is priceless. I will be posting some gems from the books I read here soon.
I am also getting close to ordering the new bike. I have settled on the Trek Marlin, because it provides the best versatility for my needs. Definitely good enough for the weekend rides up the mountain, capable of off-road and upgradeable in case I become more serious about cycling. The month of May is coming up, and I need to start getting ready for the Ottawa-Montreal ride.
So I may have gone and downloaded a torrent consisting of 1000 electronic books for my Kindle device. The range is pretty much everything from ‘The Odyssey‘ to ‘Madame Bovary‘ to ‘Moby-Dick‘ to ‘The Audacity of Hope‘ and ‘Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman’.
Of course it’s would be illegal, but we won’t go into that right now. Think about it from a typical amoral computer user’s standpoint. It took 30 seconds of personal effort, negligible computing power and 20 minutes total time to obtain the foundation of much of the modern civilization and culture. With the exception of narrowly specialized vocational training, education is now free.
When the concept of religion is reduced to striving for something greater than Self, I could subscribe to that, at least theoretically. It is when we try to explore a meaning any more specific than that, it becomes very difficult to accept.
