Thanks to Doni for this wonderful link to a long but enjoyable article/critique.  The author, Zadie Smith, interweaves a movie - The Social Network - with a book - You Are Not A Gadget .  While I don't have much interest in seeing the movie, it's a book I'm definitely going to be reading before too long.

The main thing that struck me in this article is somewhat of a side note of focus.  Smith (as well as the movie and the book) wrestle with what drives Generation Y to do the things that it does.  The traditional goals of great wealth or great power seem uninteresting to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg.  This must make it really difficult to write scripts or books or articles about him.  Yet it's totally in keeping with the nature of Generation Y, philosophically and otherwise.  This is the result of philosophical and religious choices that are now close to overwhelming our culture.  Smith writes towards the end of this essay:

A few paragraphs later she relates her students' reactions to a scene in a book she is having them read:

And finally, a few paragraphs later:

What is the meaning of life?  Philosophically and theologically, Generation Y has been informed that there is none.  There is no unchanging Truth, and even if there were, we couldn't possibly know it reliably or communicate it effectively.  Power and money are means to an end, a means to accessing or controlling Truth, with all of the commensurate benefits that can come from such control.  But those tools aren't effective if Truth is nonexistent or unknowable.  Those are tools from another age.  The aren't for another age, because there are still plenty of people who recognize today that even if there is no truth, having money and power is a better way to spend your life than not having power and money.  And some of those people have scores to settle, addictions to feed, a twisted desire just to see what they can get away with, and any number of other minor and major neuroses that the rest of us need to pay attention to for our own protection.

If not power and money, then what?  What remains?  Smith argues relationships.  I think that's a bit too generous.  I think ultimately what matters now are feelings.  Feeling liked.  Feeling popular.  Feeling connected.  Feeling in the know.  Feeling reassured that your life has some meaning because you are connected to x number of people.  Never mind that those feelings are all too often superficial and poorly supported, even in the midst of unprecedented opportunities and options for connectivity.  Relationships take a lot of work, but feelings are relatively easy.  

Click a button.  Send an invitation or a request.  Accept or deny (or now, make your decision later).  When connected, the other person exists not so much as a unique person (relationship) with dreams and hopes and abilities and shared history, they become a source of feelings.  Perusing their photos, evaluating and judging their status updates.  We have the illusion of relationship because our connected status allows us to 'hear' from them daily or weekly or whenever.  Never mind that those updates aren't generally directed towards us, and are shouted into a bleak ether made only slightly more friendly by the illusion of tens or hundreds or thousands of people that might hear and care, if only briefly.

If relationship was really the point, we'd prioritize that.  We'd write letters (snail or e-mail).  We'd take trips to visit people.  We'd invest ourselves in the relationship in tangible, active ways.  This would make a few things immediately apparent.  That most of our digital connections are not people we'd be willing to go to that effort or expense for.  We may have a lot of connections, but as social researchers continue to stoically chant, we have very few real, true friends.  People we would take a bullet for.  Or a plane.  Or an hour out of our day.  Very few of our connections matter in a real and deep and abiding sense in that they matter to us,  rather than for us.  Most of them provide just feelings.  It's all we want from them.  It's all we expect to be able to give them, if we bother to think of giving them anything at all. 

As an obstinate Facebook user (I don't update very often, have never changed my profile picture, etc.), I understand the lure of feeling.  And I do very much see Facebook as an adolescent-driven source for feeling.  Smith comments:

I think that Smith is too quick to paint users of Facebook passively.  I see it's limitations and awkwardness, but I do value the fact that it has enabled reconnection with people.  The people that I really revalue reconnecting with I tend to now relate with in ways other than Facebook - emails or letters or visits.  But Facebook was valuable in that initial step of reconnecting.  Perhaps that is what it will ultimately be remembered for when it goes the way of Facebook and any other sort of software interface.  It remains to be see whether, once those connections are there - or more accurately once the subset relationships are there - people will move on with their lives (and relationships) without a continued desire to be told how many pigs their friends have found on Farmville, and without the constant advertising opportunities that will only increase with time.  If we are more than the sum of our ability to coerce or purchase or connect, we'll need to demonstrate that in meaningful ways.  I tend to think those ways are going to look a lot like how they've always looked, as opposed to having a new medium and methodology to them.  

Or we may just continue to take the easy way out, reinforcing ultimately the philosophy that nothing really matters, only what we think or feel, and other people will continue to be reduced to tools for generating feelings and thoughts within us.