In Praise of Facebook

I love the movie 'The Social Network'. Watched it today all over again. The power that an idea has is ably described in the film. You have a kid right out of his teens who takes this thought of his to a billion dollar business. Although some doubt whether the idea was actually his, the film also shows that ideation without execution is hardly the stuff success is made of. And thus, the guy playing Mark says in the movie, "If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you would have invented Facebook."


Facebook is not just a site today, it is a place where people connect with friends that they normally wouldn't find the time to connect with. I remember once my profile stalking some of the friends I once hung out with, just one comment on their status rekindled our contact. It really allows one to permanently stay in touch with our friends, so-called friends, colleagues and relatives and that is a blessing in this age of speed.

What's more, it gives us a voice on issues worth raising and a chance to bring people closer on the same. 

It started out as a college specific website but today, with about a billion users, it has the population of the third largest country in the world. And that's not just a social network, that's a giant network. A compelling story that was needed to be told.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nothing to Say

Image
What if it were true that life is meaningless? What if life really had no purpose to it? What if everything that we do was nothing, meant nothing, resulted ultimately in nothing? How would such a realization impact our way of life? Will it mean that we begin to see the pointlessness of having to live this tardy life? Will it mean that we finally decipher why sometimes people can seem so despaired, why sometimes we despair and why we can, at times, look half-dead, half-alive? Albert Camus said, “The meaning of life is the most urgent of questions,” he said in  The Myth of Sisyphus , but “I continue to believe that this world has no ultimate meaning.” As for death, Camus said, “We know it ends everything,” and results in  eternal nothingness . Eternal nothingness , yes. And it comes to everyone, eventually. Whatsoever one may possess, one may attain, one may achieve. So, how are we to deal with this?  I think that the answer is hidden in the question itself. If life means not
Read more

Fight Club

Image
You know that moment when you see something that gives you a fresh perspective and a new take on things? I had that moment in the morning when I saw the David Fincher directed Fight Club . Now, the film has a lot of violence, fighting and bloodshed but it also has something serious to tell us about the lives we lead or at least think we lead. The movie has this unnamed narrator who befriends a soap salesman named Tyler Durden on a flight. They later start a fight club where people come to fight recreationally. I was fascinated by Tyler's take on life and things. What was remarkable was just how relevant his outlook is to the contemporary world we live in. A world where we have all become simply consumers. A target for companies to buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like. And yes, the line originates from this movie only. So why a fight club? The director says, "We're designed to be hunters and we're in a society of shopping. There's noth
Read more

The Omnipresent

So finally I've begun writing about the greatest story ever told: the Human History. And I don't intend to begin by talking dryly about Harappans or Mesopotamians here. I want to start by using the three words found at the start of the world's most read text: "In the beginning". And I want to start by talking about History's greatest hero and most revered being: God (and He's still going strong, by the way). So, in the beginning, we had God who created everything around us. Or so the Holy books say. Throughout history, if there's anyone who has most impacted our lives without actually having ever been seen, it is God. From our very birth onwards, what we eat, what we wear, how we see the world around us is dictated by our religions. And all this is done to ensure that our guy in the sky doesn't get mad on us. He is in everyone, in everything and he is all-knowing. He is perfect, the purest and without his wish, not even a leaf can move. But you
Read more