WWotD - 29 March 2012

So it looks like the old debate over adding a <dislike> button to Facebook has a new angle: someone has created an app add-in for an <enemy> designation. I'm fascinated by Facebook not adding a <dislike> button (per the article, they consider it a low priority), and how it opens up a discussion about social media as a "positive" environment versus an "unrealistically positive" environment.

It's a small piece of an entire area of philosophy that emerged in the past ten years (and is even more fascinating to me): ethics and emerging technologies. Technology gives us so many more ways to interact and communicate with each other, but its breakneck evolution is in a vacuum outside of our ability to consider the implications to society. Could anyone have predicted how ubiquitous cell phone usage would become (a topic about whose impact I've already covered)? Similarly, Facebook is now a big part of many people's lives...but how do we impact what Facebook is and how does Facebook impact what we as a people are? I contracted "Facebook fatigue" last year because I realized that Facebook made me obsessed with other people's egoism and with my own egoism. The details of my life are (and should be) important to me, but they are not important to anyone else (nor should they be). People ascribe importance to the written word because historically writing and writers were scarce commodities, and thus limited to matters of importance.* Now we all write about every little thing and nothing, and every little thing is important and thus nothing is important.

It's a magnificently absorbing study-in-progress of how our society is evolving.

* Yes, I get that writing a blog is also egoistic. But in this particular case no one reads my blog, and I expect no interaction with other people. It's like screaming in space. This is more comfortable to me than Facebook, where my <friends> will <like> what I say and comment about what I say and I will <like> how <friends> react to it.

Ludd·ite

 noun \ˈlə-ˌdīt\

Definition of LUDDITE

: one of a group of early 19th century English workmen destroying laborsaving machinery as a protest; broadly : one who is opposed to especially technological change


from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/luddite