How Far Would You Go For Facebook?

In a recent Huffington Post article, guests at a luxury hotel indicated that they would rather give up alcohol while on vacation than social networking. Although it may seem ridiculous at first, the study is also a frightening reality check of society's apparent addiction to interacting with others online. Be it through Facebook, twitter, or even e-mail, many people find it difficult to go one day (let alone an entire vacation) without going onto the web and updating their posts or perusing the posts of others.

If membership to a social network was an innocent part of life, then it probably wouldn't be so alarming to me that we all have such a hard time living without it. But the fact is by being on social networking sites you are indirectly allowing companies to market to you. Every time you like a particular page, or post a status about a product, companies use that information to formulate an idea of what your interest might be. As a result, there will be ads on the right hand side of the screen tailored to your interests. Even if you decline to both like pages and posting statuses, they could still market to you based on your age, gender, and other demographics.

At the same time, there is the aspect of the unknown about social networking membership. Who knows who exactly is looking at our information and for what reason. The panoptic nature of the internet means that we can never be certain if forces like the government or our teachers or whomever are actually looking at our pages. Think of the phenomenon of "Facebook creeping". If you participate in the activity, you know that you have probably spent way too long of a time looking at someone's page who you may barely know or not even know at all. Have you ever wondered who "creeps" on your profile or why they would do it? And perhaps the motivations of these unknown entities are less innocent than simply Facebook creeping.

So if by being a part of a social networking site means basically becoming a mine for marketing companies and an object of potentially unwanted attention, why do we participate? Why would people ever subject themselves to such a simultaneously ambiguous and nefarious force? Perhaps we were unaware of these dangers when we first joined our beloved social networking sites. But now, as the Huffington Post article indicates, there may be no turning back. If these sites are actually more addictive then alcohol, can we expect to see an influx of Social Networking Users support groups sometime soon?

Don't Write the Eulogy of Print Just Yet

 

      Increasingly we have experienced a sense of conversion from print to digital. With the advent of Nooks and Kindles at the same time as book stores like Borders going bankrupt, there seems to be a direct causation. While it is true that these events simultaneously occurred, I don't think that e-readers have crumbled the institution of the printed book.
      As Michel Foucault explores in his essay "What is an Author?", the printed word had its beginnings in exclusivity. Not only was literacy uncommon in the Middle Ages, but early books had to be made painstakingly, either by hand or with early forms of the printing press. Books were valuable and one of a kind. Although they became more accessible with later, faster versions of the printing press, they retained their sense of importance through the author function. To be well-versed in a certain area of thought, there were established authors and their publications to read. Today this tradition continues, not only with the reading of the "classics", but also with the idea in general that certain authors are experts in their particular subject. Why is it that professors assign specific readings in their classes? Could the same information be learned from other, lesser known sources? Although the answer may be yes, the fact remains that authors and their works are assigned hierarchical levels of importance.
      In the same manner, the media through which information is conveyed can be arranged in an order of reliability. In comparison to print, the digital world of information sharing can often be counterproductive. Simply the instantaneous nature of the internet and its countless contributors can allow it to be characterized as an unreliable source. And although e-readers are not necessarily as fickle as your average internet blog, it is true that they lack the sense of isolation that the printed word provides. While reading  a physical book, one is confined in general to the intended information. But on an e-reader, there is the possibility of downloading other publications and even playing games, which may distract from the reading experience altogether.
      The inferiority of both the internet and the e-reader therefore reinforce the importance and exclusivity of the printed book. Not only does a physical book usually cost more than its digital counterparts, but also more work goes into its production. Instead of the digital world driving out the world of print, I hypothesize instead that it has made the book itself more valuable to the reader.