(For those of you who are tired of yet another Facebook rant, yes, this is one – you can skip it now.)
I’ve just gotten onto Facebook, and I’ve discovered a few abundant things about it so far:
1) An abundance of time – I’ve discovered that I can spend 30 minutes on Facebook, and not notice at all where the time has gone. Even though I have a clock in the upper right corner (on a Mac), and I suppose that a part of my brain knows that time is ticking away, the conscious and responsible part of me ignores the ticks completely.
2) An abundance of people (part 1): I’ve tried looking up a few folks, as well as my alma mater, and discovered 500+ people with the same or similar names. Wow! I remember looking at the white pages in the phone book when I was a kid, and noticing all the similar names (Smith or Lee, in particular). Now, with the internet spanning every town in just about every country, even a name like “Davis” gets thousands of hits, from just about every continent. It truly brings home to me the global impact of the net. And governments think they can stop this??
3) An abundance of people (part 2): I’m gratified and annoyed at the same time. There were dozens of people I already knew already on Facebook that I never knew were on Facebook. And then there are those I *want* to be friends with, but aren’t yet on. Some may never be. I can hope for the rest, soon. I have found this immediately addictive (see part 1, above). This is far better than my first pass at the Internet in the early 80’s, when (I admit) I really saw no point. Finding people is fun!
