The Social Network
'the wise man will profit from his enemies'. Xenophon.
'If we greatly transform ourselves, those friends of ours who have not been transformed because ghosts of our past: their voice comes across to us like the voice of a shade.' Nietzsche
Facebook is a social network service and website launched in February 2004 that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc.As of July 2010 Facebook has more than 500 million active users.
Love it loath it Facebook is here stay. It has become an intrinsic part of how we communicate with those we care for and even those we don't. How many friends someone has on Facebook shows how socially mobile a person is despite the fact it has been scientifically proven that we are actually only capable of maintaining 150 individual relationships.
There are some psychologists that are worried that Facebook is driving a worrying trend of 'friendship addiction' causing insecurity in those who use it. Most of all - Facebook is fun and allows you to keep in touch and voice and opinion form part of a collective, whether it be a business, fan club or as we have seen in more recent trends for political action then it has become an important part of our society. To 'like' a post is engaging and therefore empowering.
Dialogue recently watched 'The Social Network' the new movie about Mark Zuckerberg and creation of Facebook whilst charting Zuckerberg's personal friendship failures. Although we were inspired by the sheer determination of Zuckerberg but were left with many questions unanswered such as 'why would he ditch is friends?' 'does he really not have any feelings?'
Here are what some other people thought:
David Denby New Yorker - describes Zuckerberg as “a symbolic man of the age, a supremely functional prince of dysfunction” who “leaves behind his friends as well as his intellectual inferiors,” which Mr. Denby calls “Zuckerberg’s tragedy.”
Andrew O’Hehir of Salon enjoyed the film. Referring to Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of Eduardo Saverin, also a founder of Facebook, Mr. O’Hehir draws this comparison to F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”:
As I’ve already suggested, this movie is more like a pessimistic, modern-dress reworking of ”The Great Gatsby,” featuring Garfield’s Saverin in the Nick Carraway observer role and transforming the enigmatic, self-constructed dude at the center of the story from a suave ladies’ man and party host to a tic-laden, hoodie-wearing introvert who can barely hold a conversation.
Like Gatsby, the Zuckerberg of “The Social Network” is almost pathetically consumed by the Girl Who Got Away, who drove him not just to play a vicious prank on Harvard’s female population but also to become the youngest billionaire in history.
Did you 'like' it?
The future of the political, for Derrida, becomes the future of friends, the invention of a radically new friendship, of a deeper and more inclusive democracy. This remarkable book, his most profoundly important for many years, offers a challenging and inspiring vision of that future.