The Age of Inundation

"When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place. So, what we view our role as, is giving people that power." - Mark Zuckerburg

“Over the course of the last generation or two, a variety of technological, economic and social changes have rendered obsolete the stuff of American social capital.” - Robert Putnam

Im sick in bed today, without much hope of doing anything else rather than express my opinions from a computer.  Regardless, trends in social networking and social capital have always interested me, and I feel that the recent changes in Facebook, an incredibly powerful company in this day and age, start to really reveal what it is people desire in both social networking and in social capital in general.

First of all, we should ask what is social capital.  Social capital, as defined by Collins English Dictionary, is "the network of social connections that exist between people, ... which enable and encourage mutually advantageous social cooperation."  Simply put, social capital is any and every way that people interact and build relationships with each other.  Social capital is anything from playing cards with neighbors to lending someone money, and the capital that we build is theoretically used just like any economic capital is used.  Its incredibly simple, despite any sort of technical jargon you add to it, but its role in development and poverty studies has only recently been realized and really respected.  Today, we actually begin to look at social capital as something as incredibly necessary as any sort of basic good. 

Leaving theory behind, the real question is what role social networking is playing in social capital.  Well, it sort of depends on who you ask.  Robert Putnam, a distinguished political scientists, wrote a whole book titled "Bowling Alone" to argue that social capital is on a steep decline in the United States and that technical advancements in social interaction through the internet is partly to blame.  Though he doesnt explicitly mention Facebook in the book (from what I can remember.  been a very long time since Ive read it), one can only imagine what he would say about thousands of college students and young professionals maintaining nominal relationships through their computers and doing less of actual social interaction.  For people of our generation and age group, more and more social interactions are taking place online instead of in person, and this is perhaps worrying to some people (including myself) but also supported by others who view it as augmenting social capital, not destroying it.  So which is it?

Electronic savior?

One thing is for sure, Zuckerburg is pretty sure of his own position.  The young billionaire, along with owning one of the most successful social websites in history, sets himself up as a starry eyed idealist who, rather than lining his pockets, seeks to revolutionize humanity and our methods of communication.  "The thing that we are trying to do at facebook, is just help people connect and communicate more efficiently," he says.  

For Zuckerburg, at least this is what he claims, Facebook is a revolutionary idea that gives the voice to the voiceless, mobilizing the world and making people more open minded about sharing information.  And with this claim, who could really be the one to criticize him?  By blabbing on about democratic ideals of representation and transparency, Zuckerburg hides behind a wall of good intentions that assures all critics and naysayers that Facebook could not possibly be up to no good, but only has your best interests in mind.  Thus, when Facebook roles out new changes that open your information to new people in ways you didnt think possible, how are you going to be the one that protests to transparency and representation?

Despite Zuckerburg's lofty ideals, being in charge of a social networking site means that he is still accountable to the people that use his service.  He can only give them what they truly want and, if they dont like it, they are free to leave.  But if Google + has taught us anything, people are cemented to Facebook for the very same reason that people criticize it: a compromise of your privacy.  

Behind the lofty ideals of its creator, Facebook is un-sexual voyuerism, from its beginnings as "Facemash" to the giant database it is today.  When someone logs on Facebook, they are given the opportunity to scan thousands of people's preferences, pictures, and lives without anybody knowing that their watching.  The same inkling that sends thousands to movies to watch stories play out from a safe position and urges literally millions to watch porn on the internet is, at its basis, the same inkling that keeps people Facebook stalking for hours at a time.  Scanning people's lives from the comfort of your computer takes out the risk of social interaction, since you can gather information with no risks and, this is the best part, they literally have no way of knowing that you're doing it.  People can now know more about you than you will ever know, yet this innocent voyeurism isnt seen to be strange, because it is voluntary and widespread.  As Zuckerburg remarked once, people are sharing more and more information about themselves than they ever have before, and dont even seem to mind it.  In fact, trends show they are encouraging it!  Zuckerburg, in the end, doesnt claim to be in any sort of wrong with lowering privacy because, in the end, its what Facebook is based off and what people will always be seeking.

So how does this affect social capital?  In the end, and in my opinion, what we see is a dispersing effect, not an augmenting effect.  Facebook, though originally only intended to reflect the relationships that you already have in real life, has become a way of making friends in of itself.  So, one could argue, how is this any difference from having friends over e-mail, or even over letters?  Since Facebook has such a wealth of information about preferences, beliefs, and to some extent personality traits, it can partly satisfy needs for social capital in a way that nothing before it has been able to do.  By constantly feeding you information through your newsfeed, Facebook gives the user a feeling of being nominally connected to thousands of people which nearly eliminates the need for close connections.  Obviously, you could argue that Facebook is what you make of it, and that the people who want to maintain thousands of nominal connections will and those who want fewer, closer connections will keep them.  However, the changes in Facebook show that Zuckerburg and his team are not neutral in the matter: they know people want to see more and more information, become deeper voyeurists in a way, and will therefore make sure this happens by feeding people as much information as possible and to cement them into using their service.

Should we be panicking?  Too soon to tell.  Maybe the trend will begin reversing and people will want their privacy back, but whats clear is that this generation is enchanted by sensory overload.  All internet services in one way or another seek to inundate the user with information since its more available than it has ever been in the history of the world.  How this will affect how we interact with each other will be sort of interesting I think.


I have too much of a headache from sickness to continue this thought. 

~Jared