Book Of Faces

I'm not afraid to spend time on my own, I rather enjoy it in fact. From time to time at least. As tonight I'm sitting here trying to figure out how to construct my days in order to be a more efficient student, and my only company is a glass of wine and the TV. The movie that's on isn't particularly good, but with Sean Bean as a flight captain I'm not complaining...

One thing I'm lacking is focus, I get so easily distracted. Procrastination has been almost a hype word, but there's definitely something to it. I'm an expert at "delaying tasks with counterproductive, needless behavior". Like writing blogposts instead of reading up on my literature. Walter Ong with his Orality and Literacy is waiting and so is a brick of a book on Philosophy and Computer Science.

One way is to use the blog more consciously, and turn it more academic. Probably won't though, but at least tonight I'd like to say something about Facebook. With over 150 million active users, and blessed by the pope this is a site "everyone" is familiar with in some way or another. What might surprise you though, is that I haven't been much of a regular user, in spite of being very much into digital culture in general. I'm actually quite skeptic. I did join Facebook about 2 years ago, but only because a few of the students at a course I attended thought that would be a good way of keeping us together; sharing ideas and stay updated although we were spread around town doing our practice. I already had my blog back than, and wasn't that keen on putting too much effort into yet another application. And I also noticed that the girls who suggested it in the first place already were regular users, and everything sort got mixed up. I wasn't particularly interested in which party they were going to that or this weekend. Bottom line - I didn't feel like I needed Facebook.

Two years later Facebook is like I said, something almost everyone is using, or so it seems. The user interface of any online paper lets us tie whatever we're reading to our Facebook wall, if that's what we want to. I also have friends who use the site very constructively, building networks related to their field of work or studies. And in two years the possibilities within the application itself has obviously improved, making it a lot easier to manage your content and restrict access to your profile. That last point is still the main reason I'm not a huge fan of the site, and I'll tell you why.

(This is not Saturday evening anymore; I lost the internet connection and had to continue tonight, which is Sunday...) OK, I logged on to Facebook, a friend of mine had posted on my "Wall", asking if it was a long movie. Ha, she was just being funny, but I saw her point. Newbie as I am I didn't think of updating frequently, and my last word on "What are you doing right now?" said "Karin is going to the movies" which was posted like 26 hours earlier. Anyway, I removed that statement and withdrew. But as long as I was there I could do so searching, couldn't I? First I searched for an old friend I haven't seen for a while now. She's married to my ex husband's best friend, and we used to hang out a lot. But you know how it is, it's not easy to maintain relationships like that after a divorce. The reason for searching for though, was that she'd ran into my daughter a couple of weeks ago, and told her she's been looking for me on Facebook but couldn't find me. I realized she must have searched with my married name, and I'm not known by that anymore...

What I find a little bit disturbing is that so many people display so much on their profile; personal history, family pictures, group memberships, and so on. And everything is fully accessible to anyone! I know, 'cause curious as I am (had I been a cat I'd be dead all 9 times over), I did a little more searching on various names from my past (and present). If I ever knew any Johnson or Svensson those wouldn't be easy to find, but the ones with rare names... I felt a little uneasy I must admit as I was looking into the private lives of people I merely share a connection with. I know him, he knows her, and she knows someone else... The thing is that these people won't know I've seen their profiles and pictures of their kids. I almost feel like a stalker, and I don't like it.

Digital cultures and media is my field of studies; nevertheless - I too fall into the pits sometimes, being too naive, so I can't help but wonder how easy it is for the majority of these 150 million users to ignore the "risks". You might say I'm being just as exposed with my blog, but at least you can't find that one by simply Googling my name!

Late - again- and I need to get some sleep. Have to see my doctor tomorrow, hopefully he'll let me in even if I don't have an appointment. My bet is that he will... can tell you more another day. Good night, my friends.