Social Networking Tales

We are in the post modern age and as predicted people who own information virtually rule the world. The founders of Facebook are called accidental billionaires for launching one of the most popular sites in the world. We hear that a film about the Facebook story is underway and we are looking forward to this in October this year. Anyway, let me share stories about social networking. On the top of my list is a friend who announced that he is very proud that he cannot be accessed on Facebook simply because he wants to keep his privacy. Last year, while I was in Europe, one of the heads of a government intelligence agency had to resign because his wife unwittingly published in Facebook their family whereabouts (as in where they were or where they usually go) which was of course a breach of security, as it turned out for the well meaning wife, after the fact. If they were ordinary people not working for gathering intelligence for Her Majesty, the act of publishing these photos or album would have been just very benign.

Employers are able to access these social networking sites to learn about prospective applicants. Which is why, it is important not to misrepresent ourselves in these sites. But, social networking is a wonderful medium. One is able to connect with friends from a half a century ago and from many parts of the globe with the option to do all these all at once.

Now and for the future, it is no longer difficult to write history or biography or the obituary of a person by just culling information from these sites. Lately, one of the sites has apologized for not being able, in the meantime, to monitor deaths of users and so they are not also being able to update other users.

The obvious downside to the use of these social networking virtual sites is that these sites can derail you from the more important things in life like actual bonding with family and friends or finishing tasks related to making this world a better place or simply by derailing us in doing our livelihood or paid work. One can really get lost in connecting with friends. We connect in these sites with friends that are beside us, or sitting with us in one table or with officemates working with us in the same room.

Some employers have discouraged accessing these sites during working hours. Of course, these sites can also be tools for doing one’s work like the announcement of a product or a meeting schedule or to interact with clients and partners or for virtually almost anything imaginable that will make work easy.

One of the most powerful usages of these sites is that it was one of the tools that was used for the campaign and election of President Barack Obama to the most powerful post in the world.

Today’s challenge in the Philippines, though, is making these social networking sites available to most everyone in the countryside. Many towns in the Philippines are still not connected to the wired world.

The other challenge is how to harness these social networkers in the wired world (who are just, otherwise, going on with their business oblivious to the many problems in our immediate communities) to the great task of making this world a better place than it is now.