Saw this on r/futurology. From the comments:
- For all its ills, social media really is kind of a miracle of anthropology. The things we seem to feel the most uncomfortable about, i.e. posts like "running to the bathroom lol brb!", would be a freaking boon if we discovered them in, say, diary form from someone in the 1700's. The documenting of everyday behavior, when set up against more robust historical events, will probably ensure that ours is the most completely understood generation (thus far) by the future.
How do you guys think this is going to play out? Will Facebook archives to the distant past be saved, will they be publicly accessible, etc. Every US President from the year 2030 onward has a Facebook right now, etc. No more guesswork for historians writing biographies. No more of historical sources being limited in scope to those with money or influence. No more -- I'm sure there are hundreds of things; I've only just started thinking about this. I could see this being a really interesting discussion.
This is fantastic, but actually goes much deeper than social media timelines. Think about all types of social information available to us. My granddad literally grasps at a past that doesn't exist. He has no pictures and maybe a few letters. So little information of a beginning lost to time forever. Our generation has pictures, video, blogs, twitter, etc. the list could go on forever. One of my friends just adopted a kid and the girls entire life is recorded in vine-like video clips on her iPhone. What would it be like to be a 100 years old with a large portion of your first year recorded? The function of all of this is for improved memory. Technology enhances human memory. Whenever we have the technological ability to collect information about our own lives, we do it. I suspect that children in the 2050s will have almost all relevant information about their lives recorded in some way, shape, or form. Most likely in quantitative and qualitative ways that don't currently exist. If there is an ultimate goal to this technological progress it can best be represented in attempting to have a complete and unified history of self and consciousness. And it will all be in the Global Brain.
I wonder how this will affect storytelling though. There are some truly excellent storytellers in my family and the way that they told me about our family and family history is no doubt embellished and colored by the passage of time. It's actually a subject I've written about in my own work. If you've ever read 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, then you'll have a sense of the kind of storytelling I mean. No doubt, many people will still be willing to listen to their family histories regardless of the facts, but for some I foresee more moments akin to those like finding out that one's dad isn't the strongest man in the world, or that one's parent's are merely two human beings doing the best that they can.
Modes of storytelling have always been altered by technology. Most anthropologists are starting to consider language itself to be a technology. The types of narratives you can construct pre-language are quite primitive. Very short strings of symbols without grammar. With language storytelling can properly emerge. Perhaps as a function of explaining things that are confusing or mysterious. Perhaps as a function to aid in something natural selection related (e.g., improve hunting routes by telling stories, etc.), or sexual selection related (e.g., telling a story about something intelligent, novel, or funny to a member of the opposite sex to increase chances of copulation). Then think about how story telling would be changed by the invention of writing systems. All of a sudden you can transcend time and space. You can read the thoughts and words of someone who isn't immediately present. This significantly enlarges the number of stories that can be told (i.e., quantifiably changes stories), but also qualitatively changes stories by significantly enlarging the types of stories that can be told (i.e., let me tell you a story from another time and another space that you have never experienced and may never experience). In contemporary times stories can be told in a number of different mediums that never existed before. We use new technologies to create more stories and different stories. That will never stop. Stories will always change both qualitatively and quantitatively in relation to the technologies in existence. This shapes families, friends, and every social unit. Fundamentally changing the nature of story telling fundamentally alters the types of relationships we have, because they change the human narrative and how we imagine our lives.I wonder how this will affect storytelling though.
> Modes of storytelling have always been altered by technology. Most anthropologists are starting to consider language itself to be a technology. The types of narratives you can construct pre-language are quite primitive. Very short strings of symbols without grammar. theadvancedapes, the whole start of your comment reminded me of this, which is (I guess) a spoken-word poem. I thought I'd share. humanodon, you might enjoy too. Are you familiar with Rives? I don't slam or do spoken word myself but, if it's good, I can enjoy it. http://www.ted.com/talks/rives_tells_a_story_of_mixed_emotic...
I'm not familiar with the guy. Clever video though. It's been a while since I really paid attention to spoken word or slam. I think Saul Williams is pretty good, though I wonder what his success would look like if no one ever saw him perform; how would people react to his poems on the page? For me, that's the disconnect in regard to slam vs. page poetry. In universities and colleges, people that study poetry tend to focus on how things look like on the page and only occasionally focus on the sonics and even then, it's mostly on rhythm, meter and rhyme rather than flow and phrasing (by which, I mean rhythm and meter used musically, rather than the stilted music of dust settling on turning pages). On stages where slam is celebrated, people pay attention to the person and their voice more then the words or the meaning and of course, all enjambment and the power of linebreaks and shape are lost to that "slam intonation" the one that lets people know they're listening to a poem just as the droning of a priest lets everyone brace themselves (and the knees) for a sermon. Take for example, Beau Sia and compare the delivery to that of Williams, how the vowels stretch, the way that words are attacked. Ultimately, I'd like to reconcile the two and technology seems like the way to do it. What I'm working toward is displaying poems on the page while providing the audio of how I would read the work alongside it, letting the words shape the voice rather than the opposite. To be clear, I'm not shitting on slam fans or people who love the page. To be sure, I've found pleasure in both, I just think that there's something missing and that this division, these two ways are really just people taking detours when what I feel people should be doing is stopping to build a bridge.
Oh, I understand that. Philosophers often consider language to be technology, not to mention linguists and writers as well. My first philosophy professor was fond of saying that "language is like eyeglasses through which we view the world." I have found this to be useful in teaching others to speak English as the very structure of language fundamentally changes how people express themselves. This is interesting to me, since I haven't much considered how current technologies will be used in relating to people who will exist. What I was getting at specifically, was the question of how stories will operate when there is the awareness of an existing body of fact, unaltered by human perspective and experience for the listeners to check the stories against (in the case of a person talking to another about the past). Surely exaggeration, embellishment and bullshitting will be around for a long time, but it's the how that interests me.
What you're suggesting is only relevant if we assume that everything posted on facebook is true. What if Grandpa was a little story teller himself and everything that came out of his mouth - or on his timeline - was already bullshit? The past that we uncover is ultimately - and unwittingly - a mediated artifact simply by the fact that it is not experienced in the present.
That's so, but how many people already assume that everything they read on the internet is true? Or from historical sources? Not only that, but remember that timeliness are not only populated by self-posts; how many times have you been tagged in a photo taken by a friend, for example? Anyway, the whole subject is only valid if users do in fact, use these social media sites for their entire lives and if they continue to exist far enough into the future that a situation like the one proposed by the image. Given the speed with which the internet changes and that younger users are eschewing Facebook because their parents are on it, suggests to me that in as little as five years from now, social media will be radically different and may be structured very differently from our experience of it at the moment. For one, what if all the current issues regarding internet surveillance and tailored advertising, including the permanent retention of information รก la Facebook, are considered to be unacceptable? I doubt that will happen, but I do think that the internet will continue to be pretty volatile for quite a while.
Inarticulately I will say holy balls, man. This is wild to think about for sure. Reminds me of this story written by Isaac Asimov, The Last Question. If anyone hasn't read this I highly recommend it, especially if you are interested in this idea of a 'global consciousness'. Incredible and somewhat scary at the same time.If there is an ultimate goal to this technological progress it can best be represented in attempting to have a complete and unified history of self and consciousness. And it will all be in the Global Brain.
Holy balls is right. There is actually an institute that focuses on studying the Global Brain; aptly titled: The Global Brain Institute. I'll be giving a talk there in October (Oct 4) and will be starting my Ph.D there sometime in 2014. I'll be sure to write a lot more about the Global Brain in the future.
Hey woah, congrats. I missed this news if you shared it elsewhere. Thanks for the badge. I've been completely overwhelmed thinking about this idea more over the last couple of days -- it's uncharted territory. I'm conflicted, because I disapprove of filming/photoing young children and then sharing the results everywhere; seems like a violation of privacy. At the same time, watching old home videos of myself, of which I have but a few, is very odd and unique.I'll be giving a talk there in October (Oct 4) and will be starting my Ph.D there sometime in 2014.
Brings to mind Deb Roy's, The Birth of a Word talk from TED. Simply for the amount of information his child will have about his first 3 years of life.
TIME TO PISS ON THE PARADE * * * Li'l story. My cousins are Quakers. Ever been to a Quaker wedding? I done shot one. They're supposed to go like this: 1) Invite everyone in the congregation. It'll be a potluck. 2) Bride and groom gather at the front of the congregation. Nobody talks. 3) If the spirit moves you to say something, you say something. If it doesn't, you listen and reflect. 4) At some point bride and groom decide that they've been spiritually fulfilled by the ceremony and they say "yep, we're married." 5) Cake. It's a cool idea, and in theory it should be awesome. This wedding was up in Estes Park so it should have been lovely. Where it all fell apart, however, was with the Groom's family. They were all Southern Baptists. And if the bride is going to invite her entire goddamn congregation, the groom's family is going to come out in muthafuckin' force. And a whole bunch of people gathered in a crowd being quiet struck them as "uncomfortable silence." And a whole bunch of people gathered in a crowd filling "uncomfortable silence" ended up looking a lot like an AA meeting. So what should have been a fairly pleasant 30-minute to 1-hour meditative interlude in the woods turned into a 3-hour "hi I'm Distant Cousin Shirley and I wish you both a pleasant marriage. Let me recount some story that I think is appropriate in this juncture but has nothing to do with anything or anyone here before I hand it off to Distant Cousin Larry." Worst of all for me, is I was "shooting the wedding." Which means every chucklehead who stood up got popped every single time they stood up. Because god forbid I miss the photo of Grandma Moses saying something heart-warming about Great Grandpa Phineas who died all those years ago that was the last time the family saw her before the accident and you call yourself a photographer? I shot 35 rolls of bullshit. The actual stuff that matters? The photos of the wedding party that you might actually show off to people? Had to squeeze that into 9 minutes before I lost my light. Things went so overtime dealing with trivial bullshit that there was no room for the meat. THAT'S FACEBOOK. * * * It's not a time capsule of all the important things in your life. It's not a running exploration of someone's majestic social graph. It's a scattershot explosion of every trivial detail in every trivial person's life because they're all so concerned with sharing each others' trivia that the trivial has become momentous. I finished a novel a couple months ago. I started thinking about how I would say "I finished a novel" on Facebook. Which got me to thinking "why the fuck would I want to share that amongst people's NSA petitions, songs from the '80s and shots of their fucking lunch?" So Facebook doesn't even know I finished a novel. Facebook knows that my daughter makes awesome faces and that the shoot I was on yesterday was scheduled for 30 pages. It doesn't see the good shots of my daughter, and it doesn't know that I spent a delicious amount of time hanging out with Louis Gossett Jr yesterday. 'cuz it's a trivial fucking place. And you're judged on how trivial you are. And if you decide to be NOT trivial, you better fuckin' well be NOT TRIVIAL AT ALL or else you're just a pretender. If anything, our "social graphs" will merely serve to demonstrate the bullshit we spewed at each other 40 years ago because we were too busy being awkward to be real, or too busy being real to be awkward. Either way, it reflects us the same reliable way a funhouse mirror does, serving up the exaggerations as if they were real, and serving up the real as if it were an exaggeration. There's a girl I'm Facebook friends with. We were on a 3-week shoot in 2008. Haven't seen or talked to her since, and she was in another department. From what I can gather, she's developed some form of chronic pain syndrome, is unemployed, and is having a rough fucking time of it. A few days ago she posted these two things, 8 minutes apart: 1) "Today is a very special day I am grateful for. 50 years ago in this day My Mom and Dad tied the knot. Congratulations Folks!! I love you!!!" 2) "I need sendoxen. To bad like every good med, we can't have it here. Might have to hit the silk road." Facebook has turned this person into a punchline for me. And if Facebook didn't exist, she'd just be a pleasant memory. I'd rather have the pleasant memory.
In high school I was smitten with a girl named ... we will call her "Susan". She came from a very religious evangelical family and even though I was staunchly an atheist back then, I allowed her to drag me to church with her on Sundays. Anything to spend time with her. She was sweet, tall, thin and full of freckles. The kind of girl that felt bad for swatting a mosquito and talked about all the good things she was going to do after college. I remember one night there was a big meteor shower and we set up lawn chairs in her front yard to watch it. She was wearing knee high athletic socks and fidgeted nervously in that lawn chair probably waiting for me to kiss her, but I was way too nervous. That was my strongest memory of Susan. It's a fantastic memory. It was my strongest memory, that is.... until Facebook. Susan friends me on Facebook and I start seeing her status updates. Each one a more ridiculous homophobic slander than the last. They're not even creative or original. Things like, "It's not Adam and Steve, it's Adam and Eve." I un-friended her, which I know she noticed. It sucked for everyone involved. If 60 years from now my daughter and other "kin" were to look through my FB page, they would basically see a whole lot of pictures of my daughter. If they were to look through the archive of my time on Hubski, they would get a very good look in to the man that I actually was. I've actually thought about this before. If I were to unexpectedly die, I would hope that my wife or mk would one day present my daughter with the things I've written and created here.1) "Today is a very special day I am grateful for. 50 years ago in this day My Mom and Dad tied the knot. Congratulations Folks!! I love you!!!"
2) "I need sendoxen. To bad like every good med, we can't have it here. Might have to hit the silk road."
They are invaluable. More important than anything else. Hubski captures the moments when your consciousness collapses down into beliefs and ideas. It is a shame that less than 6% of modern humans have had the chance to do this.I would hope that my wife or mk would one day present my daughter with the things I've written and created here.
So ... if Facebook didn't exist, in 2500 the year 2000 would just be a pleasant memory instead of a historical reality? I know that's not exactly what you're saying but your post isn't remotely approaching this from an anthropological point of view, so it's mostly irrelevant (interesting stuff about the Quaker wedding rituals, though). Dismissing Facebook as a trivial place is clearly wrong; it both is and isn't. There's a famous old diary written by an English clergyman or similar, wherein he wrote down everything he ate every day for multiple decades in meticulous detail. On the other hand there's Shakespeare, whose handwriting survives in something like six places, all signatures. If Facebook had been around in 1600, I wouldn't give any more of a damn about what British clergymen ate for lunch, but I would sure know a lot more about Shakespeare. So I don't think your analogy really works. Facebook has caused me to feel disgust for many people I've met, and also to respect many people I met never have realized were interesting. Some people spew bullshit, others make posts that in 500 years could easily be seen as valid anthropological record. Thoughts?
Thoughts: Presumes the only thing we'll have is Facebook, when in fact we'll have oh so very much more. Also presumes that Facebook is an impartial observer of life, which Marshall McLuhan would sternly disagree with. The point of my post is that the environment of Facebook is its own perspective, and that perspective is one of lies and triviality. In other words, were the world of 2500 to only know us through Facebook, they would have an incorrect and detrimental view of us. An allegation, not an argument. Facebook is a trivial place. Through it, trivial things are made important and important things are made trivial. It is a filter through which perception is altered to fit the perpetual need to "share." When we "share" everything, the things that we should share are drowned out by the things we shouldn't, and the things we shouldn't broaden and cheapen the discourse to the point where we no longer trust our social instincts. It is famous for existing, not for what it contains. Lichtenberg's Waste Books, on the other hand, are famous for what they contain... which is the day-to-day scribblings of a philosopher-scientist. And to you, Shakespeare is Shakespeare and the clergyman is "an English clergyman or similar." Shakespeare shared the shit that mattered. I don't think you would. The fact that we know a hell of a lot more about lesser figures of the same era, despite the fact that Shakespeare was celebrated in his own time as much as he is in ours, illustrates that the man valued his privacy. I think you don't want it to work. So on balance, it's a null. Although why we "friend" people we don't respect is a bit of a mystery, I'll admit... while also pointing out that it's a big part of the problem. And without Facebook, history would forget the bullshitters. The 500-year-post folks? I guarantee that they have outlets other than Facebook.So ... if Facebook didn't exist, in 2500 the year 2000 would just be a pleasant memory instead of a historical reality?
Dismissing Facebook as a trivial place is clearly wrong; it both is and isn't.
There's a famous old diary written by an English clergyman or similar, wherein he wrote down everything he ate every day for multiple decades in meticulous detail.
On the other hand there's Shakespeare, whose handwriting survives in something like six places, all signatures.
If Facebook had been around in 1600, I wouldn't give any more of a damn about what British clergymen ate for lunch, but I would sure know a lot more about Shakespeare.
So I don't think your analogy really works.
Facebook has caused me to feel disgust for many people I've met, and also to respect many people I met never have realized were interesting.
Some people spew bullshit, others make posts that in 500 years could easily be seen as valid anthropological record.
Here goes nothing. You're right, we'll have more than Facebook. Facebook is just the first and most popular at the moment. For example, we'll have hubski (things like it), which shares a lot of similarities with my Facebook feed now that I've weeded it. Facebook, I would argue, is extraordinarily representative of our society -- that was my point with the deacon's diary. We're a trivial fucking people, and lying to the future about that isn't helpful from an anthro standpoint. Additionally, I disagree that Facebook is entirely trivial, or that the good will be "drowned out" by the bad. That's a historian's job, making sure the good stuff isn't lost in the haystack. When you say that Facebook is a trivial place and that "we" share everything that isn't important, statuses about lunch and bathroom breaks and god knows what, you're doing a disservice to maybe 5 percent of the population, and it'll be that 5 percent that matters. I don't want to just use myself as an example apropos of nothing, but I haven't physically typed a Facebook status in at least a year. I share articles on everything from baseball to economic policy (many found on hubski), and the comments on them could theoretically provide a pretty solid snapshot of, say, how relevant certain issues were to certain people (from a future perspective). Facebook isn't one entity. -- We got really, really, fucking lucky with Shakespeare and you know it. I consider him the greatest user of the English language to ever live, and it makes me wonder if there were others just as good who we don't even know existed. (Some say, for example, that Marlowe was Shakespeare's equal, or would have been. Who knows now.) And without Facebook, history would forget the bullshitters. The 500-year-post folks? I guarantee that they have outlets other than Facebook. It's a null for me, but who cares. I certainly don't friend anyone. Occasionally people request me and I accept them if I don't want them to get annoyed with me in real life, where things matter. My overall point is that from an anthropological standpoint of learning about our species, we don't want to "forget the bullshitters." We want to know everything. I've studied Roman daily life -- what they ate, why, when, how they went to the bathroom, how they treated their slaves, wives and kids -- and do you think that's the sort of thing they found interesting about themselves? The point isn't that without having Facebook from 1500 on we'd have missed out on Newton's Principia -- the point is if we'd had it we'd know a lot more about why he was so fucking nuts all his life.So on balance, it's a null. Although why we "friend" people we don't respect is a bit of a mystery, I'll admit... while also pointing out that it's a big part of the problem.
But you have no argument for this. You're attempting to say "we got lucky with Shakespeare" but that does a grave disservice to Shakespeare. He got read because he was good at it and wanted to be read. Facebook only accentuates the latter. Abso-fucking-lutely. More importantly, when you have to scribe it in charcoal ink on papyrus you focus on the shit that matters. If the Romans had Twitter there'd just be more bullshit to wade through. | The point isn't that without having Facebook from 1500 on we'd have missed out on Newton's Principia -- the point is if we'd had it we'd know a lot more about why he was so fucking nuts all his life.| An argument you cling to with no evidence whatsoever. Using your own example, if Newton were you, our perspective on Newton would be a bunch of news clippings. You think we won't have news clippings in the future?My overall point is that from an anthropological standpoint of learning about our species, we don't want to "forget the bullshitters." We want to know everything.
I've studied Roman daily life -- what they ate, why, when, how they went to the bathroom, how they treated their slaves, wives and kids -- and do you think that's the sort of thing they found interesting about themselves?
No, no, no -- we got extraordinarily lucky that Shakespeare's works survived. He wasn't considered the god of the English language then as he is now -- just popular. And if not for the unasked-for work of a couple of his friends, we wouldn't have any of his plays. Period. Huge argument against oral history, really: it's a fucking miracle we have the Iliad. But Newton's not me! Half the people in the world use Facebook, and they're all different and use it in various different ways. To claim that historians in 500 years are only going to have bullshit left from the age of info-vomit on the early internet is ridiculous pure and simple. You're essentially dismissing with hindsight that there's anything interesting about past cultures that we don't know we don't know by saying that we're better off not having lots of (possibly trivial) details about them. Being happy about a lack of information goes against everything students of the past are about.An argument you cling to with no evidence whatsoever. Using your own example, if Newton were you, our perspective on Newton would be a bunch of news clippings.
Many of his plays were published in editions of varying quality and accuracy during his lifetime. In 1623, John Heminges and Henry Condell, two friends and fellow actors of Shakespeare, published the First Folio, a collected edition of his dramatic works that included all but two of the plays now recognised as Shakespeare's. It was prefaced with a poem by Ben Jonson, in which Shakespeare is hailed, presciently, as "not of an age, but for all time." Shakespeare was a respected poet and playwright in his own day, but his reputation did not rise to its present heights until the 19th century. The Romantics, in particular, acclaimed Shakespeare's genius, and the Victorians worshipped Shakespeare with a reverence that George Bernard Shaw called "bardolatry". In the 20th century, his work was repeatedly adopted and rediscovered by new movements in scholarship and performance. His plays remain highly popular today and are constantly studied, performed, and reinterpreted in diverse cultural and political contexts throughout the world. Let's back up for a minute and see where we've come from. The argument under discussion is that Facebook is gonna be great for future generations because it will preserve everything. My counter-argument is that it skews the discussion such that "everything" is a bunch of bullshit that nobody cares about now, so why should they care about it in the future? In defense of your argument you have put forth the notion that "we got extraordinarily lucky that Shakespeare's works survived." This is not true. It's entirely probable that our record of shakespeare is better because of the folio that his friends published (they did not assemble it purely for love) but Shakespeare was popular then and he's popular now. It's a moot argument anyway - we're aware of Van Gogh, who was obscure during life, and Emily Dickinson, who was completely unknown. Quality will out - John Kennedy Toole killed himself in 1969 and his mom shopped his book around. A Confederacy of Dunces won a Pulitzer in 1981. It's not a miracle we have the Iliad; it's a testament to the strength of the story. You've also put forth the notion that just because you share news articles on Facebook does not mean that everyone shares trivial bullshit on Facebook, but you have yet to cite evidence of truly interesting stuff that started on Facebook. The only things I can think of are Kony 2012 and random, useless picture changes in support of issues that Facebook has no leverage over. Which is not what I'm claiming, and is not something I would ever claim. I'm claiming that all they'll have from FACEBOOK is info-vomit. You have yet to counter this claim, but you have asserted again and again that Facebook is a repository of modern-day genius as if repetition will make it true. I'm not. I'm saying that if the ancient Romans had Facebook the statements they made there would not be particularly relevant to the historical record. Somehow you've conflated my statement of "Facebook is bullshit" with your desire for me to say "information is bad" and I suggest you rethink that. That's because historically speaking, information has been impossibly scarce. That is no longer the case: "It is estimated that one weekday edition of today's New York Times contains more information than the average person in seventeenth-century England was likely to come across in an entire lifetime." Consider the NSA: For going on ten years now they have had recordings of every foreign and domestic phone call made in the United States. All of them. Every single one. Somewhere in a data center in Texas resides every conversation the Tsarnievs ever had about the Boston bombings. Did it do them any good? Do you think they could even find them now if they wanted to? We've gone from "a needle in a haystack" (Emily Dickinson) to a haystack in a haystack on Planet Haystack in the Haystack Confederation of the Haystack Galaxy. Presume the signal has stayed about the same - for a given population, the same percentage of people are Dickinsons, Shakespeares, and Homers. The noise has gone up exponentially. Facebook is pure noise. Look. The entire drive of this "the future will look back on my Facebook graph and see genius" is a narcissistic assurance to assuage the realization that the present sure doesn't give a fuck. And if the present doesn't give a fuck, why on earth would the future? If you want to make history, make history NOW. Don't presume that the future is so bleak that our trivial bullshit suddenly becomes interesting through the long lens of time.No, no, no -- we got extraordinarily lucky that Shakespeare's works survived.
To claim that historians in 500 years are only going to have bullshit left from the age of info-vomit on the early internet is ridiculous pure and simple.
You're essentially dismissing with hindsight that there's anything interesting about past cultures that we don't know we don't know by saying that we're better off not having lots of (possibly trivial) details about them.
Being happy about a lack of information goes against everything students of the past are about.
I don't know where you're going with the Shakespeare tangent, which was nothing more than a throwaway analogy I used three posts ago, and I don't know why you think the Wikipedia article contradicts anything I've said about him. I don't care about that, anyway. Your argument is: Facebook is pure noise. Mine is: it's 99 percent noise but there are potentially broad historical and anthropological conclusions to be drawn from the noise, or from whatever remains of the 1 percent. Fair? You say I haven't backed up my claim, but I'm not sure how I can. It's an opinion. I don't think it unreasonable that, as the reddit poster said, someone's great great grandkids might eventually trawl through their Facebook posts, or some of them, or maybe ones that contain the word "family" just as someone in the 1800s might have read grandma's diary. Only this way it's easier and more definitely possible. Additionally, I think it possible that historians in a few centuries might look back at any one of the meaningless social "movements" that sweep through Facebook (the equality thing, maybe) and draw conclusions about us as a people, or use their findings to corroborate other ideas. A lot of my friends post art and poetry on Facebook. None of them are very good, but odds are the next Poet Laureate of the United States is out there writing poetry on his wall. You say talent will out, but you commit a logical fallacy in doing so. The fact that throughout history much talent has survived in the form of Shakespeare or Van Gogh or Homer is not representative, because it fails to take into account how much great art or writing we've lost to time in the process (a lot). Ironic that you use Van Gogh as an example; since he considered his works worthless he didn't take care of them, and an unknown number were destroyed. -- In one aspect do I agree with you -- Facebook isn't the solution, it's one small facet of the much greater solution that is represented by the internet and technology in general. Internet archives, not just Facebook, will be what historians turn to gleefully in the year 2500. Facebook may even be a bad example, because as you say it has a much higher percentage of chaff than many other possible sources of information for future humans. However, it's what got me thinking about this, and it offers a more personal touch while being a large enough entity that there's some chance its archives will exist a long time from now.
I am trading in evidence. You are trading in opinion. I say "Facebook is trivial." You say "I THINK it isn't." Think what you want. I've demonstrated my point. Fine. I'm not sure why you think your opinions and my facts are equivalent. Everything else you say is "I think." I'm more of an "I can prove" kinda guy. So think what you want. You're wrong. So what do we need Facebook for? "Art is the act of creating something out of nothing and selling it." -Frank Zappa If it wasn't sold, it wasn't art. End of line. So in the end, you agree with me while reserving the right to accuse me of fallacious thinking. Nice.Mine is: it's 99 percent noise but there are potentially broad historical and anthropological conclusions to be drawn from the noise, or from whatever remains of the 1 percent. Fair?
It's an opinion.
None of them are very good, but odds are the next Poet Laureate of the United States is out there writing poetry on his wall.
ou say talent will out, but you commit a logical fallacy in doing so. The fact that throughout history much talent has survived in the form of Shakespeare or Van Gogh or Homer is not representative, because it fails to take into account how much great art or writing we've lost to time in the process (a lot).
Facebook may even be a bad example, because as you say it has a much higher percentage of chaff than many other possible sources of information for future humans.
I hear you on facebook shaping the way I see people and how that clashes with memory. There's a girl I know who's real stupid and a real wet blanket, but because of her job and the following she's cultivated among people who don't know her, she's able to use facebook to come off as a real smart cookie. Shame.
That is a very interesting phenomenon to think about. The problem I see is that I think it's going to be hard for people to stay on any single social network for all that long. It seems like Facebook is sort of already just a bit over it's hump and is slowly going downwards. It'll be around for awhile longer - no doubt - but it's hard to say how much longer. But obviously there will be at least some subset of people that continue using Facebook for many, many years to come, and maybe that's all future historians/anthropologists will need is a few interesting cases that they can explore (although obviously more would be better). I'm not exactly sure why, but I see Twitter as having a bit more longevity. EDIT: This sparked a great conversation between a friend and I on this topic (thanks!), and he thinks that it'll cost too much in storage space for Facebook (et al.) to move dead profiles over to new storage before their drives start failing. Is it worth it for these companies to keep old, unupdated profiles around? Obviously famous ones can be kept easily enough, but what about others? Where's the line drawn? Will the kickback from families not wanting their grandparents Facebook timelines lost be enough to keep the information alive? Any thoughts?
Your edit gets into what I have no idea about. I assume that Facebook has total legal rights to any and all profiles, even after they go dormant -- but what about people who die and never get the chance to delete their info? What about extremely famous people? And, yeah, what about costs -- if Facebook goes down, which it inevitably will, does someone somewhere realize that the information on it could be priceless to future generations? I don't really know who to ask about this.
From my future grandchildren: Wow, grandpa sure reposted a lot of stuff from this website called Hubski. He also posted a shit-ton of photos of mom. He always has a beer in his hand. Grandpa posted about music a lot. -I'm okay with that. This is all assuming that Facebook is around 20 years from now. I'm not convinced that it will be. I once had a huge amount of personal information on Myspace and I eventually jumped ship to FB and didn't look back. Many people assumed that G+ would be this for FB -I was one of them. There seems to be an arc to the viability of a site and I think FB is at its apex right now. What's next? I'm not sure.
Even if Facebook itself isn't used as much, there will still be people using it, and unless it goes the way of Myspace and gets bought up by someone like Timberlake and redesigned, it'll still exist 20 years from now and further on, including all the data that's there. And, barring any mass social ideological revolution in which all of a sudden total and utter privacy is regarded over any other attribute, there'll always be something akin to Facebook. It's not the details, but the concept.
Agreed. And I'm just thinking out loud here, but I'm curious then if there will ever be one unified 'place' that we go to which is of such base level importance that we stop questioning it's cultural or even stylistic relevance and simply regard it as a given standard of humanity. I think the internet in general is already there for the most part, but I'm wondering if the web companies around today are non-cyclical i.e. defensive commodities that will become an essential part of our shared histories.It's not the details, but the concept.
I would guess that as the virtual aspects become more "real" and people can feel as if they are in the surroundings they inhabit online, the social aspect of the internet will change drastically. No longer will it be text based, but it will actually be verbal. "Faceboook" will be a bar, a stadium, a park or whatever you want it to be. You will interact with your "friends" as avatars. All of this will change in a very, very big way. Future generations will look back at the way we are "connected" now and wonder how we were so disconnected. edit: Eventually, it won't even be verbal. You will interact chemically. -What?