Facebook ~ Untangling organic agglomerations of technological chaos or just helping people hook up?
Facebook, when it was first started, was an exclusive club walled off from people who did not go to “elite” schools. Then as it started expanding, it was interesting to see which schools were slowly being considered as elite enough to get in. Before you knew it students who shared the same names wrote each other from rural, little-known schools to see if the other Sarah Jessica Jolly Rogers would be willing to be her friend. Then, the gates magically opened to everyone. Users that is.
Interestingly, The Atlantic author Michael Hirschorn has attributed this growth pattern on business smarts, but it makes me wonder if it did not really follow from pressure from Facebook wallflowers sitting in the Ivy shadows and scratching their elbows on the red bricks of the walls around Harvard Yard. The real initial buzz was caused by most people’s inability to get in. From their the network was established and exponential growth caused by word-of-mouth took over. Network much?
The article, on page 148 of the October issue, is by Michael Hirschorn and is called “About Facebook.” The sub-heading states that “By bringing order to the web, Facebook could become as important as Google.” Elsewhere he points out that blogger Jason Kottke says in his blog post “Facebook vs. AOL, redux” that Facebook is like AOL 2.0. Kottke apparently refers to the strategy of Facebook as “a walled garden,” meaning that the company orders a small piece of the web into a comprehensible and attractive destination, but that it can never encompass the whole web.This statement is therefore highly relevant to the Rapidsea blog.
The word “paradise” is actually a derivative of a word from the ancient language of Avestan, from an area located in present-day Iran. I have seen the word referenced as both “pairidaeza” and “paradeisos,” which translate as “walled enclosure” or can be interpreted as “walled garden.” The latter “paradeisos” might be more closely related to the Greek version which evolved from the “pairidaeza.”
So while many people today think of paradise as a natural setting away from the influence of man, its origins are actually related to a very planned space significantly touched by humans (initially as orchards and hunting grounds, used particularly by royalty hunting stocked game). Only after printing processes became capable of spreading descriptions and drawings (and later photographs) of far off places did we began to relate untouched places as paradises. They also became heavily correlated with religious connotations of Eden.
How is this related to Facebook? Well, the Internet is a landscape created entirely by humans (or their technological derivatives) and navigating it would be next to impossible without tools like Google and now Facebook. They provide the order and Facebook has chosen to take away the pure exclusivity of its people and to return to the ordering of organic agglomerations of technological chaos.
Either that, or it is the most reliable place to spy on your love interest or to pass the boring work days since the majority of us still play by the 9-to-5 economy’s rules.
If you are one of those people, be forewarned that a new chaos is coming for you if you pass your days in a cubicle. Get ready to order your own life. Something beyond Facebook and LinkedIn will be coming soon. If you’re the founder, get on it today.
- - - -
Posted on September 21, 2007
Filed Under Eden, Relationships, Society, Technology | 1 Comment
Comments
One Response to “Facebook ~ Untangling organic agglomerations of technological chaos or just helping people hook up?”
Leave a Reply
HOME
[...] in their hearts, but who are really trying to escape. The editors are drawing from both the ancient and modern meanings of the word "paradise" — from formal gardens to island [...]