Facebook as a knowledge catalyst

Stefano Benvenuto 21 ottobre 2014

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Facebook as a knowledge catalyst !

It's 2014 and we are facing a historical evolution in mankind history: one seventh of human population is connected to a unique platform and is constantly communicating with each other sharing its own knowledge; that platform is Facebook.

It's just 10 years old but, it feels like we were born with it. All started as a college hacking joke website by Mark Zuckerberg and his colleagues, and now every digital device connected to Internet that has communicative purposes supports Facebook with a dedicated application. For instance, iOS devices (like iPhones and iPads) have Facebook app integrated into its Operating System simplifying the share of photos, videos, thoughts through the web. How did we come to this? Well it's pretty simple: humans have a particular thirst of knowledge. It doesn't matter if it's about current world news or just the roommate's new picture, the point is "we need to know". For years internet had various instant messaging programs (e.g. MSN, Yahoo! Messenger) or social communities (e.g. Myspace, Netlog) but they didn't became viral1 for its lack of interconnection between known users and external public. With the introduction of Facebook, the ability to share web pages (containing local news, music, videos, etc.) became really easy. Essentially it's a news website where its content is filled by users. Also, meeting new people or old friends became really intuitive with its geolocation feature and friendship hints algorithms. So here we are: connected to our friends, sharing common interests, discovering new things every moment, acquainting ourselves with new people all around the world. Facebook

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Quickly and widely spread or popularised especially by person-to-person through electronic

communication.

is creating a world without boundaries, where different cultures can meet and progress altogether.2 It also have created a new market. In particular, it has become the 2nd world leader in mobile advertising market3 constantly increasing its share every year. The platform scavenges through our Facebook attitude and understands which products or services we would probably acquire. As we more use Facebook, the ad will be more accurate and specific so the sponsor will easily find a new potential customer. Finally we have a real competitor that erodes Google's predominance. As any good thing in the world, the compulsive usage of the Facebook platform may become a sort of mental disorder. In the last moths we’ve been facing the “selfie-syndrome”: people repeatedly shooting and sharing pictures of themselves in every moment of the day, of what they are eating, of what they are d o i n g. A r e s e a r c h conducted by the California State University in the late 2013 shows us a very long list of psychiatric disorders related to selfies and the general abuse of the social media platfor ms: addiction, depression, narcissistic personality disorder, voyeurism, obsessivecompulsive disorder, etc.4 That shows us that even th e m o s t i n n o c u o u s instrument can be seriously dangerous, so,

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It must be said that not the whole world is freely connected to the Facebook. For example China,

Syria, Iraq and Iran actively force their internet providers to block any connection to that site. In those Countries Facebook is not the only website censored by their governments. 3

http://www.emarketer.com/article.aspx?R=1010690

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http://www.bestcomputerscienceschools.net/selfies/

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watch out when you’re posting a new picture of yourself: you could be affected by one or more of that syndromes (also, no, I’m not trying to make you hypochondriac, it’s just a warning). Besides the bad effects Facebook (and social media in general) can give us, I still think it’s playing a leading role in the human development. Maybe, one day, this will lead us to create a singular “hive mind” where our experiences and consciences will be constantly shared through it as one collective consciousness occupying many bodies. That can sound weird and crazy. It should, just as many common devices we are using today were part of the science fiction just as little as 50 years ago and seemed really futuristic and strange5.

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Stefano Benvenuto

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Captain James T. Kirk was using the palm-sized Communicator in the 60s Star Trek sci-fi tv-series

to keep in contact with the Enterprise; nowadays anyone can buy a smartphone that can give him not only the possibility to communicate with everyone in the world, but also: geolocate himself and obtain directions to everywhere, have access to almost all human knowledge though internet connection, watch the surrounding ambient with augmented reality, have a personal Artificial Intelligence that can understand a large number of commands and help us with everyday problems, etc.

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