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17 years ago
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Week 9: Spontaneous Brilliant Thoughts
This is a place for rambling thoughts, for spontaneous brilliant thoughts that just have to be written and cannot wait. A place to post something that comes to mind after lecture, or while reading, and that will generate spontaneous responses and a back and forth communication. So, freestyle your brilliance and post!
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Why DO we love Facebook so much? Do we enjoy the power we feel we have when we can learn information about other people? Or do we also enjoy sharing our information?
I liked it and other forms of online communication because it was a way to interact with others. Humans are social beings (again, I'm being normative...but most scientists would agree with that statement). Why do people like hanging out in malls, parks, etc? The MAIN reason people use facebook is because they have friends/acquaintances who also have facebook. There is still a pocket of youth who use other online social networking sites. Many of them use myspace instead. Why? Because that's where their friends are. For a while, facebook only allowed people with a college email to have an account. So there was a sizeable population of youth that either could not get a facebook account or had a bunch of friends who could not. In high school, (before facebook opened its virtual doors to the general public), Myspace was the major social networking site and it was at the peak of its popularity. Having a facebook account was not just a tool for interaction but also a sort of social status. At first, it was only for harvard students, then only for ivy league students, then for people in colleges, now it's for anyone (who doesn't get caught using it to commit a crime).
So for work, I sit in a panopticon-like room in wheeler auditorium, where i can see the backs of 500 students. I always see numerous people on facebook. Here is what I have observed, I'm not trying to imply or pass judgment, I'm simply stating what I've seen and maybe you can theorize why that is.
For facebook:
1. the person is usually a female- whether this is because there are simply more females at berkeley or because females are more likely to bring laptops to classes or because females are more likely to check facebook during class or any other reason is impossible for me to say.
2. the person is usually looking at pictures
3. When the professor says, "Stop looking at facebook and pay attention, this is important!" People giggle and about half the time the person continues to look at the facebook page anyways.
Why do people like facebook so much? I don't fully know, but I agree with my business professor that sometimes this doesn't feel like a top public university :/
...that he does not believe in such a thing as a "Protestant ethic".
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