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bricolage \bree-koh-LAHZH; brih-\, noun: -a dump site for anything at hand, in mind-

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Facing Facebook

This is the year 2008. Probably most of you have heard of "Facebook", the (probably) most famous networking site on world wide scale. There are pros and cons about this service. Those who are for the service likes the vastness of choices from controlling privacy to "applications" that you can choose to make you stand out from the sea of users, while those who are against (or mildly speaking: those who have other thoughts) the service called it as withdrawing people from existing social network, intruding privacy to the extent of "CIA can pull out any information easily".

I'd say (again), this is the year 2008. At this moment, we say happy birthday to someone in another city while we are watching a movie which was released in another continent a month ago. We order our food from a simple text message during our corporate meeting. We are looking for a recipe from a GPRS-connected cellular phone. The world is literally on your thumb. Yes, it costs damn expensive, but that's the reality that we are facing everyday. Like it or not, any facility that makes our life easier works like a damn good knife: it has two sides that you have to use wisely. There's no free lunch. There's always a catch. At least, that's what I believe.

I wouldn't grumble out the reality. I'd carefully choose things that I want to use and stay alert. Boycotting is a thing of the past as there are too many varieties of services as well as people's personalities and interests involved. For example, would you boycott "Microsoft" or rather use "Linux" and optimize your learning abilities?

I personally think, if we overworked ourselves with the ideas of "privacy" and "control", we'd get into the argument of "state" VS "citizen". Something that is pretty tiring and lengthy to explain..

I have a profile in "Facebook". I check it and tinker with it from time to time. I don't always accept invitations. I rarely do. Sometimes I seek out friends, most of the times I don't. Sometimes I tinker with the dumb but funny applications, most of the times I opt the quiz type.

I really like "10 Seconds Interview", though.

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