I never "joined," I don't try and look anyone up on Facebook on the chance they have given open access to anyone (which it seems everyone does in some regard). I have gotten emails from something gobble-gook@facebookmail.com telling me, "you have more friends on Facebook than you think." No I don't.
Of course the news last week and this is how your Facebook data was used by Cambridge Analytics, a U.K. firm, to predict how you might vote, and what products and news should be pitched your way.
Somewhat like the Caine Mutiny and Captain Queeg's search for "who ate the strawberries," everyone is now running around and wondering who's been looking at your profile, etc. Your data. Someone's been sleeping in my data.
Mark Zukerberg has popped up in several news interviews, all while not even slowing down to glance in a window at Men's Wearhouse to even check out a shirt with a collar and cuffs. He admits mistakes have been made. Congress is getting itchy. The Federal Trade Commission is getting interested. The AG's in thirty-seven states are gearing up for some legal action. The wagons are being circled around Mark's undershirt.
What is Facebook anyway? A news organization, or just a broad platform that allows users to stay in touch with one another? The ultimate social media application.
What started as a means to try and get girls while in a Harvard dorm, has now turned into something out of 1984, if only George Orwell had started writing about 1984 a little later in life.
Likes, Favorites, Shares, all ways to stay connected. And by itself, the concept is not bad. At the 1964 World's Far I distinctly remember a demonstration of a phone by AT&T that allowed you to see the caller, and the caller to see you. We got there, and then some.
One telling Tweet I read went "in retrospect, it might have been a mistake to give Facebook all of my personal information in exchange for seeing what my high school friends ate for dinner."
We can't help telling others something about ourselves. Or, having others do it for us. A story in the WSJ tells us the nominee for Director of the CIA, Gina Haspel, who up to now has had no electronic footprint in files other than her employer, the CIA, is 61, has worked for the CIA for her entire career for over 30 years, is from Kentucky, is single, is a Johnny Cash fan and keeps a life-size cutout of the man who knew a "thousand songs" in her office. There's nothing I'm going to do with this information other than share it with you, and wonder what Johnny's offspring think of his likeness in a 7th floor office at Langley.
I still have a book somewhere on the shelf titled 'The Death of Privacy." the book is from the late 60s and has pictures of IBM punch cards as being the vehicle that will whisk way all your secrets. Never mind that Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, has been quoted that there is no such thing as privacy. John Deutch, a former director of the CIA, presciently proclaimed over a decade ago that "the ultimate strategic weapon is an electron."
Looks like he was right.
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