Re: <nettime> Some thoughts on Facebook

[John Hopkins <jhopkins@neoscenes.net>]

ei Emile, nice work!

> I left facebook last week.
>
> tired of the mirrors, noise and eyes.
> tired of prickly, intimate and fleshy human relationships being

What is astonishing is the number of 'radical' net-workers & activists from the 
1990s on this very list who have melded with such ease into the FB space.  Had 
FB been described to this list in, say, 1997, IMHO it would have been consumed 
in an apocalyptic conflagration of flaming disgust -- as a puerile distopian 
fantasy spawned of the "California Ideology," and with an aim for total 
mind-control.

But, aging makes even the most radical mellow out: go with the protocol that is 
easiest ... resistance is futile ... pragmatic career concerns and PR become 
paramount.

> the incessant ‘now’ of FB started to infect my creative process;
> making for ‘blip’ attention spans and the enormous appetite of the
> beast, as Geert Lovink puts it ‘feeding a machine’. I want to think in
> longer time frames to make deeper work.

every moment given to attentive eye-glued-to-screen-and-remote-presence is a 
moment gone forever.  the possibility of turning from screen to the warm (or 
even cold) human most proximal for eye-to-eye, face-to-face, 
shoulder-to-shoulder life.  who will calculate the loss, and who will care for 
what is lost?

> tired of feelings of interpassivity and the formless mild angst it
> instills in me; spectacle 2.0 and the build-your-own-ego-ghetto.
>
> hello friends, goodbye facebook.

I would say: "Hello friends, goodbye 'friends'"

I'm following you on 01 March...

cheers & thanks for those pointed words!

jh





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