SOCIAL NETWORK

I saw Social Network the other day. In my opinion, it's a good movie,
with excellent performances all around (although the aristocratic
twins did seem a bit overdone). As a fiction piece, it is good.
Looking at it from other angles it strikes me as a sad testimony of
the path taken by the world (and by that I mean the rich techie-
internet world). That Facebook is considered such an enormous
breakthrough, innovation or invention —"Zuckerberg is out to change
the world", confessed one of his allies in a recent press article—I
think is hyperbolic and reflects on the hollowness that spurred its
expansion. It may very well be a revolutionary instrument—but only
when observed from a very low evolutionary point of view. As I see it,
Facebook is the highest-latest expression of an increasingly neurotic
society marooned in the island of superficiality and fear of the human
touch. It may have a substantive redeeming value for people who feel
socially disconnected (unwired) or who need-want to feel part of a
group of "friends". Nothing wrong with that. We all want to belong
somewhere. In that sense, FB taps into a real need of our time and it
can help to "market" and to share stuff with many people at once.
While that seems successful in itself, it does not detract from our
neurotic need to be connected—at all times, by any means necessary. In
general, FB (and Twitter and the likes) speaks volumes of the
alienation people feel nowadays and the "virtual" ways we look to
cover the void instead of actually filling it. In many ways FB is
just a mirage: a cascade of connections and "friends" with whom,
often, the only existing connection is a 5-minute chat with their
cousin while waiting to get into a club on Friday night, or a 1 a.m.
drunken photo taken at a karaoke. Smoke and mirrors. It may be a
stretch to say that everyone who logs into FB extensively falls into these categories —but I am not sure that would be true. Surely, I am not blaming the people individually for that emptiness; although it's in our hands to do something about it, the way we are constructing society lends itself less and less to the human connection. But hailing Facebook as the greatest thing since the PC revolutions is grossly excessive. It may not look like it, but it is. I believe that we, and the world, would be much better off if instead of expending our time "friending" people on FB ensconced in the solitary confines of our laptop and our headphones, we actually befriended the girl or the guy sitting next to us at Starbucks. It's immediate and real. I believe it's also more fulfilling.