Who would be willing to pay $1 to send an unsolicited message? How about $10K to send 10,000 messages? It sounds like Facebook is trying to develop a new marketing channel.
I have a favorite DVD rental store that keeps my business and seems to stay sufficiently useful to my community. Others have mentioned the importance of niche films--classics, art films, sub-genres (e.g anime, LGBT, etc.). It's not that these can't be found on-line (I don't know--maybe they can't), but they provide an environment where it's easy to browse through them along side of the blockbuster movies. Thus, you might go in looking for the Avengers, but you might also come home with a documentary, too. They also do a nice job of assembling temporary theme shelves that again mixes the new and familiar with the older and more obscure. Hey, I still enjoy bookstores, so maybe i'm living in a bubble of yesteryear.
I think the point is that there was a day in which it was actually quite difficult to get this kind of information about people--for example, you might have had to hire a private detective to listen in on your barroom discussions or question your girlfriend's girlfriends. The easy availability of this information could harm you. For example, this site recently reported how many colleges are consulting facebook sites of applicants which often reflects negatively them.
More importantly, entities with lots of resources can use this information on a large scale to control what information we have access to and what bandwidth we get, almost always without our knowing it.
As someone who wants to preserve my ability to partipate and contribute to the world on my own terms rather than be served to a la Wall-E, I, too, am conflicted about on-line privacy.
(I don't have a facebook page cause I really don't have the patience for it.)
Slashdot Mirror
Who would be willing to pay $1 to send an unsolicited message? How about $10K to send 10,000 messages? It sounds like Facebook is trying to develop a new marketing channel.
I have a favorite DVD rental store that keeps my business and seems to stay sufficiently useful to my community. Others have mentioned the importance of niche films--classics, art films, sub-genres (e.g anime, LGBT, etc.). It's not that these can't be found on-line (I don't know--maybe they can't), but they provide an environment where it's easy to browse through them along side of the blockbuster movies. Thus, you might go in looking for the Avengers, but you might also come home with a documentary, too. They also do a nice job of assembling temporary theme shelves that again mixes the new and familiar with the older and more obscure. Hey, I still enjoy bookstores, so maybe i'm living in a bubble of yesteryear.
I think the point is that there was a day in which it was actually quite difficult to get this kind of information about people--for example, you might have had to hire a private detective to listen in on your barroom discussions or question your girlfriend's girlfriends. The easy availability of this information could harm you. For example, this site recently reported how many colleges are consulting facebook sites of applicants which often reflects negatively them. More importantly, entities with lots of resources can use this information on a large scale to control what information we have access to and what bandwidth we get, almost always without our knowing it. As someone who wants to preserve my ability to partipate and contribute to the world on my own terms rather than be served to a la Wall-E, I, too, am conflicted about on-line privacy. (I don't have a facebook page cause I really don't have the patience for it.)