Facing fear and Facebook

I often hear from many people that they don’t want a Facebook account because they would not put any personal information online. I am sure everyone heard it many times.

Facebook have been propelled by students where peer pressure relieves the fear and caution. Yet there is some rather common phenomena threaded through the fear logic.

Firstly any online and off line innovation is always greeted with fear. There are always objections to change. Inevitably most of the objections are true and justified. What these objections fail to take into account is the new experience that could only be understood by an immersion. Without the experience all you left with is the objections.

Let’s say at the turn of the last century there was a large migration from villages to urban centers. Someone who lives in a village might greet the idea of the move with dismay. He will mention the crime, the dangers, the cultural peril, etc. But all of the objection could not envision a quantitative leap and the multi layered experience of urban life.

I remember when I started blogging people would be obsessed with protecting their real identity behind a nickname. Now nobody really cares (except Gandalin).

Back to the Facebook, it is an experience and it is hard to describe without taking this thing for a ride. Personally I think the weakness of Facebook is that it is trying to do too many things. Inevitably there are tools that do virtually every Facebook task better (except networking). Facebook is not match to Flicker with photos, to blogs with posting of content, no match to email and IM clients, etc.

When I hear someone tell me that they are not interested in Facebook my thinking is that it says nothing about Facebook but it says that these people are old, really old in the way they face the world and its creative wonders.