Identity Crisis

After reading the somewhat-pessimistic review of The Social Network and Facebook usage in general, I found myself agreeing with a few of what Zadie Smith likes to call, "nostalgic" views about society's relationship with technology. There are multiple points in the article where I think Smith might be slightly too obsessive with berating the idea of connections made over the internet, but at the heart of her argument, where she discusses the reduction of people via their Facebook page, I found myself nodding my head in agreement.

To me, the whole idea behind the creation of Facebook was to connect with others and share similar ideas about livelihood and to engage in self expression. I would personally like to think that I share who I am on my homepage by posting pictures of my experiences, music to which I love and listen to, and threads/comments with friends that I know outside of the internet. In all, ideally it shows others who you are and your general interests. According to Smith, however, it is a reduction and slighted representation of who you are as a person. It is what you wish to show with others and what you wish to been seen as when friends, family, and acquaintances view your profile. Smith makes an interesting point when discussing Lanier's point of view on social networking:

"there is no perfect computer analogue for what we call a “person.” In life, we all profess to know this, but when we get online it becomes easy to forget. In Facebook, as it is with other online social networks, life is turned into a database"

I had never thought of myself as a database before reading her opinion of how i represent myself on the internet. Sure I post which movies I've seen, what books I've read, and have around 650 "friends". But to reduce myself to this generalization of a profile is where Smith argues that Facebook isn't the connective site that it claims to be. It's a version of myself, a projection that doesn't truly represent who I am, whether or not the rest of the internet recognizes that fact or not.