Showing our faces....

This week, Facebook has been a major feature in the news. They have launched a whole new format for their webpage, which, like it or not, you are stuck with. The true purpose of Facebook, always thinly veiled behind the respectable curtain of sociability, has never been more apparent. Clicks and Likes are what count to their advertisers, and Facebook has stepped up to the plate of advertising dollars and sold out their original ideals, not only to the highest bidder, but to anyone who will pay them for your information.

A quick disclaimer here. I have been on Facebook for years, although not as early as my son, who was the 30th Kansas State University student to sign up. I never liked MySpace, and wasn't a huge fan of Facebook, either, but got into it for a singular purpose and never got disconnected. I have always been a little uncomfortable with the whole concept of Facebook. What you put online is truly forever, and someone can drag it out 50 or 100 years from now, and there isn't a thing you can do about it. That makes me nervous.

I have always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with social media, and technology, generally. I am all for privacy, the more the better, and every new technology strips a little more of our personal privacy away. Things like Foursquare and Check-in give me the shivers, because the thought of someone following my movements that closely is both laughable and not funny at all.

But the world has entered a Brave New Era where nothing, and I do mean NOTHING, is truly private any more. It is an interesting irony that Congress has finally grabbed onto the back of the privacy bandwagon as it rushed by. Of course, in their usual whiplash inducing way, they have taken away with one hand what they have given us with the other, passing HIPAA laws to protect patient privacy, while at the same time requiring all patient records to be online for any provider we consult to access. Not that it matters, since most people post their entire lives on facebook with total abandon, anyway. But does a dermatologist really need to know about my bowel issues, or when I had my last flu shot?

To be fair, I do enjoy the occasional stalking session myself, looking at pictures of friends and family, reading about the vacations they take, seeing their children or their grandchildren, seeing what is on the minds of people who frequent my newly revamped secret-facebook-generated-algorithm-for-my-top-stories wall. So it would be hypocritical of me to pretend that I don't also benefit from, and often partake in, the fruits of everyone else's Facebook labors.

And there is an additional hypocrisy, I realize, in posting a public blog while complaining about facebook's lack of privacy. But a blog, although it can reveal a lot about a person, doesn't chronicle my up to the moment whereabouts, or show my activities in real time, unless I want it to. Facebook, on the other hand, is about to do exactly that, whether I want it to or not. Am I the only one who finds that a little scary? Call me paranoid, but maybe I'm not the crazy one after all.

I don't know the answer to the facebook dilemma. You can put all the privacy controls on your content that you want, but you are still only one screen shot emailed to the wrong person away from disaster anyway. That profile picture you thought you were restricting can be downloaded by anyone who knows how to right click and e-mailed or posted anywhere they choose, whether you like it or not. Whatever you say to your friend is being said to anyone else who can read their wall. That is a lot of people knowing you hate carrots or went on vacation to Disney World.

Most of us do not lead exciting lives, and there probably isn't anyone out there watching our every movement. But even if no one is watching, I wonder if facebook doesn't encourage us to feel an artificially heightened sense of our own self-importance. I am a pretty boring person, with a pretty boring life. Why should anyone care what I post or what I'm thinking? Could it be that our recent level of public discord is associated with a sense that our opinion is more valuable, and valued by others, than, in fact, it actually is?

Computers, cell phones, microwaves, washing machines, automobiles - these technologies have, without question, enhanced the lives of everyone who uses them, and I have embraced them with gusto. But I wonder, in 100 years, how Facebook will be remembered? Will this connectedness be remembered as a help or a hindrance in a country polarized on every issue? Does it provide a point of common interest, or is it simply another way to advertise the lack of substance in our society?

Facebook, like everything else in this temporal world, your days are numbered. Birthday books and calendars were replaced by planners which were replaced by palm pilots which were replaced by computers and cell phones and Facebook. I suspect that somewhere in The Cloud, our next innovation is waiting to be born, and facebook will be a thing of the past. Nothing ever stays the same. I think facebook will go the way of the Apple IIe, remembered with fondness, but not exactly missed.

Maybe then we will get out of the light reflected off our glowing screens and show our face to the sun, and each other, again.

Of course, that will lead to skin cancer. As Roseanne Rosannadanna used to say, "It's always something."