Always-On Social Interconnectedness

As odd as it may be to some people, I am not a user of Facebook. My long standing joke is that you need friends to have an account on Facebook and I had neither. From a computer geek point of view, the rise of Facebook and it’s humble beginnings in a college dorm room is something I admire. It’s dominance in society, however, is a little bit scary. Especially for someone who enjoys privacy and not having the whole world know the intimate details of my life. In the last year I’ve read some related books about social networking starting with a fictional social network that totally dominated the world and then about the real-life social network that seems to have had that goal in mind (if it still doesn’t).

Last summer I read The Circle by Dave Eggers. The Circle is a company that could be thought of as the combination of Facebook, Microsoft, Google and PayPal all combined as one. They develop the prevalent computer operating system, they run the most popular social network, they provide Internet search functionality, and through your Circle account can pay for anything online. The Circle became one company that dominated the Internet and computers.

The book is about a new college graduate who goes to work in the customer service department at The Circle. It described the tech company as place where its young employees lived and breathed The Circle. Employees were ranked not just on their work performance, but also on their social engagement with the company. This included posting pictures from company parties, joining groups with others with related interests, posting messages about day-to-day events, etc. If an employee did not participate in this, they were considered to be not participating in the culture and made to feel less than.

As The Circle progresses, the creepy always-on aspect of social media and life transparency took on new heights. Feel free to read the book to find out how it goes. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who stumbles across this posting. When I initially read it, I thought of it as a caricature of social media activities. I couldn’t imagine a reality where a company encourages people to live on the company’s campus, to religiously attend corporate social events at the expense of non-corporate life, and the expectation that one is online every waking moment of the day.

A couple weeks ago I finished reading The Boy Kings by Katherine Losse. She was employee #51 at Facebook going to work in the customer support group after finishing her Master’s degree. As a graduate with an English degree she was a non-techie in a techie company. Many of the creepy parts of The Circle were mentioned by her about Facebook: employees were paid extra to live within a mile of the company office, happy hours at the office & parties among employees that were professionally photographed and posted on the site on people’s profiles, 24-hour availability expectations with smart phones, belief in near total transparency of our everyday lives, and concern if you didn’t have the same level of commitment to these corporate values. She pointed out that people would communicate more through electronic means (such as instant message) than in person, even when people were physically present with each other.

It was interesting to read. I’m not sure how closely it matches the rest of the world in terms of social connectivity online. Besides Facebook we have Google/Google+/G-Chat, Skype, Yahoo Instant Messenger and other means of electronic communication that, in my opinion, becomes less personal than a call or text. Yet, many people consider this to be social interaction. I’m not one to knock the friendly confines of my computer and the Internet. It’s been my true home for almost my entire adult life and about half my childhood. I suppose it just seems odd to me to consider this socializing.

Enough random dribble from me. I’m going to go find something productive to do…. probably online.