OKAY, MAYBE THERE'S ONE GOOD THING ABOUT FACEBOOK...

"Hey, look, here's a bunch of Grandpa's old Facebook posts..."

I’m one of those Facebook users who alternates between railing against the evils of the medium and deciding to post yet another bon mot that the world can’t do without. This desire to share my pearls of wisdom notwithstanding, my frustrations with the site lead me—a number of times a year—to seriously consider quitting it. The hook that keeps me in the game (as is true of many of my generation) is the addiction to the perpetual album of photos of our grandkids. (And, I will confess, Facebook is the only means I can think of to nudge this humble blog on its way into the wide world.)

In the interest of clarity, I’ll state directly that the main cause of my frustration is the disingenuous way that the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world pander to users by introducing the site and its various features (and ever-changing tweaks) with the assurance that they are only providing what we all want: We all want our “Friends” to know about what we’re doing and what we like and whom we’re with and what music we’re listening to. Not only is this an ambiguous half-truth, but it masks the real truth: That the features and tweaks are expressions of ever-more clever ways (tricks) to sell us to advertisers. To repeat what is now a truism: The Facebook user is the product; the advertiser is the customer. (Zuckerberg’s mantra could well be, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”)

I don’t have any objection to an entrepreneur producing, for profit, something that the public finds useful. My objection is to the disingenuousness and, yes, dishonesty. I would happily pay a reasonable amount for an ad-free Facebook—one that applies the principles of, for example, the Duck Duck Go browser: “We don’t read your stuff, we don’t track you and we don’t sell you to advertisers.”

So much for my critique of the Facebook business model. Despite my misgivings, it seems that quite a few (million) people find it useful. And, as it turns out, I just discovered one good thing about it myself (in addition to the grandchild photos). I was scrolling back through my own posts ("status updates")—quite a ways back—looking for a scrap of poetry I had posted, and I found the process to be surprisingly interesting and enjoyable. Not because my entries were so wise and witty, but because, it occurred to me, I was reading a journal—a sort of diary. And that struck me as a potentially good thing about Facebook. Depending on how one uses it, it can serve a function that is very similar to how our forbears in earlier centuries used a diary or journal: to record observations of the passing scene, the politics of the day, family news, a bit of humor or poetry—even, in the case of our family, how the crops were doing and how devastating the cloud of grasshoppers was.  Although historically some diaries have, no doubt, been intended to remain private, most journals have been kept with the idea that the thoughts and news being recorded will one day be examined by a later generation. Thus, the revelation that came to me about how Facebook postings can serve as a journal is not that it is an opportunity for a narcissistic treasuring of one’s own precious jewels of wisdom, but that it may be a very practical way to provide the kind of message-down-the-years that grandchildren previously discovered in their grandparents’ desk drawers or attics.

I started the blog that carries this essay as an attempt at producing a digital journal (the pen-and-ink variety having come to naught for me). It has worked pretty well in that regard (with occasional gaps of varying lengths). And, in a very general sense, the main audience I have in mind for my blog is two-fold: You, dear reader (and thank you); and—just as real to me—my grandkids, twenty or thirty years from now. Not that I’m writing targeted entries to them, but that they might be just as pleased one day to find the dusty papers of a grandparent as I have been.

The more immediate nature of Facebook entries (as compared to blog posts) makes them akin to “daily diary” jottings. Imagine an eighteen-year-old great-granddaughter reading the Facebook Diary of her great-grandmother—produced when she was eighteen years old herself. (And it might actually be beneficial if we all write these digital musings with the understanding that our grandkids will one day see them.)

An1860 letter to Caryl's great-grand-father

from a friend. In a later letter, he sheepishly
reports that his father had just bought him
out of the Civil War draft. Early Facebook?

When I refer to coming across the “dusty papers” of one’s grandparents, I don’t mean that metaphorically or virtually. I think an important part of this time-capsule-like interchange is the transferring of the digital material to ink and paper. To publish it. So it can be found, perhaps as a last resort, in the bottom of a dusty trunk in the attic.

For this very reason, I regularly order a handful of copies of my blog in book form. (One for each of my grandkids to discover in 2035, three to push on my wife and daughters—now!—and one to keep for myself as a, well… journal.) I’ve known of similar publishing possibilities for Facebook, but have not seriously considered the idea because I have equated it with the navel-gazing aspect—the worst feature—of “social” media. (One publishing title is “EgoBook”--for the coffee table!) But what made me give it a second thought—and what made it an “epiphany” for me—is that experience I had of scrolling through months of posts, and realizing the similarity to an old-fashioned journal. That, plus the discovery that one can edit these “Facebook Books,” choosing what to put in and leave out, as one would surely want to do.

So there’s one good thing about Facebook. Perhaps another, I’ll allow, is that I get to peek at your Daily Diary entries. Some of which are more interesting than others.

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I occasionally publish my blog collection (for the purpose stated above) with blog2print. I'm still researching apps for printing a Facebook journal book.

THOUGHTS ON THE INTERNET, SMALL BUSINESS SATURDAY, AND MY NEW FRIEND, THE DUCK...

Although the date of this post, “Small Business Saturday,” is mostly coincidental, I hope there is a certain appropriateness and coherence to this report on some changes I’ve undertaken lately in the tech-consumer-social-media elements of my life.

You might wonder, “Who cares?” and why I’m bothering to tell you about these things, dear reader. To me, this blog is a conversation as well as my “journal;” I’d be very interested to hear how you are navigating these various channels that are carrying us into and through the Brave New World that is still very new to all of us.

Here are some recent resolutions, changes, epiphanies, experiments having to do with my interaction with the internet and its wider context, with observations on why any of this might be important:

1. I now use Amazon.com only as a last resort. Two strands have led me to this resolution: One is the issue of Amazon’s treatment of employees. (One aspect of this is the basis of a case before the Supreme Court right now.) This op-ed piece by Paul Krugman is a good overview of the role Amazon plays in the economy.

The other strand is the common-sense realization that the presence of a local bookstore and other retailers enhances the quality of my community and my life, and I need to support them to keep them around. There are, alas, no longer any bookstores in Faribault (they departed while I was clicking away on Amazon), but nearby Northfield has a wonderful new bookstore, “Content,” as well as The St. Olaf and Carleton College bookstores. These are now my "first resort," followed by Barnes & Noble (both brick-and-mortar and online versions) and other online booksellers.

My resolution, “…only as a last resort,” may sound wishy-washy, but for me to say “I will never use Amazon again” is almost as unrealistic as it would be to say, “I will never use the power company….” For many years I have been (at least) a weekly Amazon shopper, and the one-click option became like the chicken-pecking-the-button-for-feed attraction at the carnival. At this writing, I have not ordered from Amazon for about two months. Surprisingly ( to myself), I haven’t missed it. I hope they’ve noticed.

2. For the same reasons of enlightened self-interest (I want these shops to stay around), I will “Shop Small and Shop Local” as much as possible. I recently had a problem with my iPhone. I was able to contact a real human being at the online Verizon site, and she was friendly and patient with me, but in the end wasn’t able to help me. I took the phone to our local Verizon store, and the cheerful, no-nonsense woman behind the counter solved my problem in about three minutes. She also corrected my mistaken notion that coming to the store or visiting the web site amounted to the same thing. “We’re actually in competition with each other,” she said. Brick-and-mortar Verizon is now my go-to site for most cell-related items and issues.

3. I have gone back to paper-and-ink as my primary medium for book-reading. I have nothing against e-books (except for that Amazon thing), and I read them quite enjoyably on my iPhone Kindle app, especially in a doctor’s waiting room, etc.

Books.

But I recently had two thoughts that led me to this change: 1). When our grandkids see me reading a book, I’d rather have them witness me reading a book and not staring into a screen. 2.) I like books. I like having them around.

4. I will happily pay a reasonable price for on-line content that is important to me. (Newspapers, music, etc). At the genesis of the internet age, most publishers and musicians were ensnared by the “I ain’t payin’ for nuttin’” attitude which was the ethos of those early days—and still hangs on. But of course It doesn’t make any sense. In the news business alone—to name one example—we’ve all paid the price for this stinginess by the cutting back of news coverage in general, foreign correspondents in particular, and the substitution of 140-character tweets for in-depth articles. (Again, nothing against Twitter—in it’s proper perspective. Here’s one of my recent tweets: “After hundreds of pre-school readings: I prefer early Berenstain Bears—when Poppa is a hapless doofus—to the later preachy-teachy tales.” Deep.)

5. I am taking the following initiatives against online data-mining and privacy invasion. (In the ever-changing internet environment, who knows if these changes are worthwhile or futile.)

• I have changed my primary email from google.com to outlook.com. Outlook claims that they do not read e-mail content for the purpose of ad placement (as gmail does). Outlook is a Microsoft product, so it’s hardly a feel-good mom-and-pop replacement, but they are up front about stating that they target ads only according to zip code. I’ll take that trade-off. I am a Mac user, but I like the Outlook interface, and the easily-ignored ads are part of a clean-looking page. (And I can get an ad-free Outlook for $20 a year.)

• I have switched my search engine from Google to Duck Duck Go, an extension of my Safari browser. The Duck does not track web searches. It is serving me well.

• “Ello” is a new social media site that is ad-free and does not follow or track users. I am joining it as a kind of experiment—it will only be as good as the number of friends that I can convince to interact with me on the site.  Like many of you, I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook. It is useful, but I mainly don’t trust it. It is clear that, as has been often pointed out, we users are the Facebook product, to be sold to advertisers. Like many of my generation, I stay with it for grand-kid photos (and, okay, I use it to lob the occasional bon mot), but I can’t wait to get off it. A researcher in a recent Atlantic Magazine article, "The Fall of Facebook," reports, “In three years of research and talking to hundreds of people and everyday users, I  don’t think I heard anyone say once, ‘I love Facebook…’”

• Just yesterday I discovered and installed “AdBlock,” another extension of my Safari browser. My Facebook ads are gone. My tastefully placed outlook.com ads are gone. Data-miners are no-doubt still mining, but I don’t see the ads!

POSTSCRIPT:

I continue to be mystified at how easily we have acquiesced in surrendering our privacy (I’ve certainly played my part in this). Germany in particular and Europe in general are taking a harder stand against the likes of Google and privacy infringement. As a result of a recent trial settlement, the court assigned a social media privacy expert to be a part of Google’s “team." In an interview on NPR, he said, “If I

walked into the neighborhood right now and went door-to-door asking, ‘Could I have photographs of all your children?’ I would either be arrested or physically driven from the house. And yet this is very close to what most of us are voluntarily doing online every day.”

THE EVERYMAN REVIEW

When I was in 10^th grade I was cast as Rip Van Winkle in the school play. At the time I sported a flat-top haircut – the same post-war style my father wore. (I had some of that gel glop that I used to flatten it down when the center started to grow faster than the edges; this was no doubt a very flattering look.) But even I knew that a flat-topped Rip Van Winkle would look stupid; I decided to let my hair grow so that by opening night I was able to comb it over into a style I later learned was called – no kidding – the “collegiate.” This exercise in thespian verisimilitude was the beginning of the end of the flat-top for men all over the country. Soon everyone was wearing the collegiate – and it all started with an experience that could be summarized as “Dick Jorgensen is Rip Van Winkle!”

A few years later, I was spinning a drug-store rack and came upon a book called “The Lord of the Rings.” I was intrigued because we’d just read “The Lord of the Flies” in English class, so I thought I’d give this new book a try. I loved it. The next week the cover of Time blared, “Lord of the Rings Sweeps Nation!” Who knew that a reporter was looking over my shoulder at the Rexall?

Time marched on. I discovered a small restaurant called "McDonalds" and gave it my business; I abandoned my eight-track tape player. Years later, I thought my feet looked stupid (there’s that word again) in Earth Shoes. So good-by Earth Shoes – for me, and for all of the fashion world.

I began to think that I was a trend-setter, or, perhaps, the fabled “Everyman.” And it’s happening again. After giving the Facebook the old college try for a year or so, I find my enthusiasm for the medium waning (oh, certainly not for your posts, dear Friend). So my usage is slipping into infrequency. Sure enough, as soon as I realized this was happening I saw this headline in Salon.com: “Is Facebook’s Growth Slowing?” Sorry, Facebook. And look out, Twitter; I’m about to give you a try. What will Everyman’s verdict be?

(Of course there’s always the exception that proves the rule. Back in those flat-top days I was attracted for a time to a new sensation, “The Beatles,” but quickly rejected them and turned back to my beloved Kingston Trio. The Fab Four somehow managed to survive.)   

IN LENT, AS FACEBOOK FADES FROM MEMORY... SORT OF

For two or three years, when our children were in junior and senior high, our family gave up TV for Lent.* Although it wasn’t their idea, our daughters went along with Dad’s scheme without too much persuasion. We put the television set in a closet, so there was no evidence of the bug-eyed monster in the house. My memory of that experience is that, after adjusting to the change for about a day, we really didn’t miss it. I can’t say that it resulted in idyllic sessions of Monopoly games or family readings in front of the fire, but we really didn’t miss it. I recommend it. Five weeks is a good amount of time to adjust to the change and then get on with a TV-less life. (A predictable question is, “Why did you turn it on again?” A good question.)

Now (at the time of this writing) I’m about half-way into doing without Facebook for Lent, and the result is much the same, with some variations. It was not the social connections I wanted to give up (certainly not you, dear friend!), but the process and screen-time of Facebook; and to evaluate how I use it. I don’t think I am any more a compulsive Facebook user than the next guy, which is to say that there is a bit of compulsion to it, and that’s what I’m temporarily weaning myself from, and quite happily.

I haven’t given up e-mail, and I have come to appreciate that digital niche more and more as a way of staying in touch with close friends and family. (I say “niche” because among the various e-communication media available to us: telephone, cell phone, texting, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, etc., I actually find e-mail to be uniquely “intimate.”) But I have come to enjoy some of those old-friend-Facebook-reconnections – the kind of communication that only happens on Facebook (these folks and I will most likely not exchange e-mails during my dry spell) – and these connections are one of the reasons that I will reactivate my account at the end of Lent.

When I do think of Facebook, it is to analyze what I’m missing, if anything, and to get a sense of if (or how badly) I want to go back to it. And I find that the thought of re-activating causes me more cold sweats than did the prospect of shutting down. It’s not just that I once again open myself up to the reports of what my friend’s cousin’s roommate fed her cat, or having to decide if I’m going to accept a friend request from my friend’s cousins’ roommate. And it’s not just re-opening that struggle with the near-compulsion of the lure of the Facebook screen…

It’s limiting myself once again to the narrow slice of myself that I present on Facebook. Oh, it’s not a phony presentation, or somebody I’m not, but it’s a narrow part of myself: The goof-off. With a few honorable exceptions, I’m basically just horsing around on Facebook.  In her new book, Alone Together, author Sherry Turkle proposes that on Facebook we’re all “performing” for each other. Although it may be a fine line of difference, I would say, rather, that (speaking for myself), I’m just goofing-off, both in the old-fashioned sense of wasting time, and in the other sense of being a wise guy.

I have no doubt exaggerated in that last paragraph. (And the reader will note that I’m only speaking for myself.) But I still seek a nobler cause for Facebook; and whether or not it is a trivial or an important part of my life is still an open question for me. FB is in its infancy – it’s still the crank-telephone on the wall into which we shout for the operator. It’s about twenty per-cent pure silliness, seventy per-cent idle chatter, and maybe ten per-cent meaningful discourse. That’s what it is now; who knows what it will become. But I’ll be there. Right after Easter. I’ll try to be noble.

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*Lent is a six-week penitential season in the Christian calendar leading up to Easter. The rationale for giving up anything for Lent is a subject for another post for another time.

A FRIEND REQUEST FROM GRANDPA

I have, of late, had a recurring vision. It is of an old man in a remote cottage, at his desk with a ham radio, sending messages into the night to his fellow radio operators. Except, I think, it is not a ham radio, but a computer, and he’s writing on Facebook.

The meaning of this vision for me is that, in spite of the important controversies plaguing Facebook,* it really is a superb (and still-developing) means by which people can communicate with one another. This may strike the reader as an understatement, but the epiphanic part of my vision is that, beyond posted photos of youthful drunkenness and minute-by-minute reports of children’s cuteness and what one had for lunch, Facebook – and whatever it evolves into – will certainly become a meaningful connection with the world - and, more to the point, with friends old and new - for the elderly and isolated.

Although people in both generations have wondered if “the parents” should get involved with Facebook (thus somehow invading the turf of the young and diminishing the cool factor), it is fast becoming as commonplace as the telephone. The use of the telephone, too, is part of my new Facebook revelation. Until recently, I supposed that the phone would be preferable to all other distant-communication technologies because, after all, you can speak directly to another human being. I’ve come to believe, however, that Facebook (and e-mail, too) offer more depth of communication – on an ongoing basis – than the telephone. Of course there are exceptions – a forty-five minute phone conversation between two people in love is undoubtedly more intimate than a series of e-mails, and it will always be good to hear the voice of an old friend. But a phone call, even with a good friend, will always come to that “er... uh... well, den….” moment (not to mention the delay and over-talking that happens with long-distance and cell calls – what’s that all about?); a similar juncture in an e-mail or Facebook message is an opportunity for more thought, or to go on to the next point. In that regard, an e-mail or Facebook message is more like an old-fashioned letter (and I mean old-fashioned – from the days when the letter was it), than it is like a telephone call. (Although it does seem odd to crow about a progression that goes from the spoken back to the written word.**)

I want to emphasize that I am speaking of e-mail or Facebook messages that go beyond the trivial; what I have in mind are little essays of communication, again, like letters. (When I get an e-mail from a friend, I’m disappointed if it’s brief. Am I running against the tide?) This is not to say that there is not an appropriate place for the quickly-dashed Facebook report, even from the old guy in the little cottage. (I just posted, “Hey, we get to fill our krumkake tubes with whipped cream on Christmas Eve!”) I guess my point is that the combination of off-hand quips and weightier conversation that the Facebook/e-mail medium makes possible offers a sense of connectedness that, while no match for sitting across a pub table with someone, has something of the immediate feel of real communication. It has the sense of keeping you connected.


OK, I’ll say it, maybe I’m thinking of either Caryl or myself alone -- widowed. It seems that Facebook and e-mail would go a long way toward enhancing the quality of life of the elderly – especially the isolated elderly. So I'm not talking about an amazed, “Hey, Granny’s on Facebook!” but, rather, “Geez, Granny’s on Facebook all the time – she uses it more than I do!"


Studies show that the home-bound elderly receive, on average, one visit per month – from anybody. Facebook and e-mail can reach into that void with real depth of communication, and, all right, maybe even a report every-once-in-a-while – between old friends – of what one had for lunch, or a posted picture of a cute grandkid.

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*Issues of privacy and “tricky” advertising are very important and need to be addressed with more urgency than they have been so far; thus, my endorsement of Facebook is not without hesitation.

**Tim Wu, in his new book, “The Master Switch,” reports that when the telephone was invented, the telegraph magnates laughed and said, “Well, maybe it can be used to tell someone that they have a telegram waiting.” Later, they tried to kill the new technology.

What happens when all those aging computer users start to forget all those passwords and user names, stranding all that information on their hard-drives or in the ether? Another issue for another time.

 I also opined on Facebook in this earlier blog post.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THIS WEATHER?... AND THE QUADRATIC RECIPROCITY THEOREM?

A recent study (as reported in this New York Times article) indicates that the more we engage in conversations of some length and depth (what the study calls “substantive” conversations) the happier we are, and that people whose social interaction is heavily weighted toward “small talk” are less happy. According to the article, the study doesn’t answer the obvious question: Is it that happy people engage in deep conversations, or that deep conversations make us happy? (That, apparently, is the subject of some follow-up research.)

In a BBC interview, the author of the study acknowledged that healthy-minded people certainly engage in conversation at both levels, but that small talk for those in the happy group is probably limited to about 10% of interactive time – kind of like “How ‘bout them Yankees?” at the beginning of a cocktail party discussion before entering deeply into a twenty-minute tete-a-tete on the relationship between the current value of the Euro and the New York Stock Exchange.

Although my example sounds flippant, my intention is not to mock. I am one who hungers for conversation, and I find this research encouraging (though I am happy to report that the study comes to no apparent conclusion about the importance of the deep conversationalists knowing what they’re talking about!).

Interestingly, the study doesn’t delve into its application to new social networks like Facebook, etc., but it certainly hints at some logical conclusions: I enjoy – to a degree – the clipped and often witty Facebook exchanges between and among dozens of friends – including (though to a lesser extent) friends of friends. They even elicit witty repartee from me. But this kind of interchange seems to have a built-in fatigue trigger – after a while it’s literally no fun. With close and long-time friends, I switch to e-mail or telephone and – although they must speak for themselves – I’ve never received an e-mail from a friend that I thought was too long. I contend that a multi-day braided e-mail conversation among three friends discussing a subject at some depth approaches the same kind (though surely not the same degree) of fulfillment as a lengthy confab over a glass of wine or a cup of coffee. (I’m not the only one who may be a challenging Facebook friend because of the difficulty of keeping those short “comments” from turning into something like little essays.) As an old friend said in an initial Facebook exchange: “Hey, this is just like e-mail – only less convenient!”

At the risk of damning with faint praise, Facebook has its place -- and I'm increasingly glad to be part of it. When you think about it, Facebook is almost a literal (and, I think, positive) response to John Updike’s existential invitation: “We are all so curiously alone, but it’s important that we keep making signals through the glass,” so I do not conclude (from this study) that happy people are on e-mail and unhappy people are on Facebook. I conclude, rather, that too much Facebook (or Twitter, or “how ‘bout them Yankees” or People Magazine) can bring you down. (One can quibble with the exact figure, but 10% sounds about right.) Like the couch potato (in me) who needs to get out into the sun, the Facebooker (in all of us) needs to "hie thee to a coffee shop" and have a good old-fashioned bull session.

(I'd love to hear your views on this.  Maybe on Facebook!)