Facebook announced Home this week. I see this as another regression in social network driven by technology and marketing.
From the home screen of your mobile phone, Facebook “putting people first instead of apps”. We will be surrounded by friends in our social network as we listen to Thrift Shop, or watch the Final Four on a screen tonight..
This, indeed, represents a trend in the social network and media, what Ricky Van Veen called the identity creation. The motivation from experience first and documentation later (by picture and video) now evolves into documentation first lead to an experience in the social network later or in real time. On another word, we have finally caught up with Japanese tourists or Chinese tourists today, we must take a picture of everything for sharing.
The world through our friends’ len is a comforting one. We listened to Money for Nothing for the first time together. We speak the same set of languages and read books from similar authors. We did not experience any wars like our parents did, life is about personal fulfillment and career aspirations. We enhance these by sharing similar experience with our friends on facebook, reading tweets, blogs, and updates from the people we carefully select and follow.
We won’t be bothered by people cling to guns and religion, we won’t be upset by lyrics from Snoop Dogg, and we don’t have to think about lives for people spend less than one dollar a day..
The world through our friends’ len is also a skewed one.
What we might miss, is the ability to make connection with people who do not speak the same language, and to seek out those connections in every new place we go. What we might miss, is to have a moment for just ourselves when we are truly touched by beauty, kindness, and peace.
There is a Home, it is the place I want to return every day and to share with someone I love.
