If your friends are bothering you

Pomegranates, originally uploaded by The River Thief. Copyright Ruth Seeley 2007

I just got a hilarious email from someone via Facebook. Well, I'm not sure why I got it - at first I thought someone had replied to all on an email that sent us a link to photos posted on Facebook. I haven't checked out Facebook's email features closely enough to know whether the 'reply to all' feature was activated within Facebook or the responder's own email client.

What I do know is that at the bottom of the email there's a Facebook-generated line that says, "Are your friends bothering you? You can opt out of emails from friends on Facebook."

I'm not going to bore you with the ins and outs of why this doesn't make a lot of sense to me because the email address to which the original link to the Facebook photo albums was sent isn't the one I use for Facebook. Who cares, really?

I am tired of hearing about the Facebook phenomenon and of being told that I have to have a Facebook account (the implication being that I won't understand social media if I'm not compulsively writing on people's walls and Twittering like a mad fool).

I have been using social media devices for more than a decade now. To some extent, I've got a lot of it out of my system. The giddy days of chat are over, although I still think that the real business potential of virtual meeting spaces was never really harnessed by corporations so people could cost-effectively brainstorm from locations across the world.

But I also think there's something just plain wrong about the notion that Facebook and Twitter represent some sort of great technological leap in human interaction. Am I missing something here? They act as centralized bulletin boards, do they not? There is absolutely nothing new about this idea. The only thing that's new is the branding and widespread adoption of two bulletin board services that incorporate some rather natural technological advancements, such as the ability to upload photo files to static sites. Frankly, that's not as impressive as the file sharing features of MSN and Yahoo! messenger systems, where you can share any kind of file you like within an instant message. These messaging systems have always incorporated an archiving option. So I think I'm pretty safe in saying that neither Facebook nor Twitter are the neatest things since sliced bread.

During at least two presentations I attended at Northern Voice 08, presenters who were online while speaking were interrupted by 'notifications' that appeared on the screen, updating them regarding new Facebook wall posts or Twits telling them what an acquaintance was doing. The first time it happened it was funny in the way someone farting might have been. The second time there was a stir in the audience and a feeling of unease, and I overheard a couple of conversations afterwards about - well, frankly, the inappropriateness of the whole thing.

Having once (and once only) been reproached by a friend for taking a cell phone call from another friend when we were having lunch, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the pros and cons of multi-tasking for the last couple of years. I've always known that while I had two ears, I'm really not capable of talking and listening at the same time, or of having two completely separate conversations at once in person. I used to be able to manage four different chat windows at a time, but I type more quickly than most and the quality of my conversations wasn't adversely affected by the fact that I wasn't uni-tasking. On the contrary, had I been talking to only one slow typist, I would have been less engaged in the conversations due to delays in waiting for responses.

I've been a member of flickr for several years now and have actively participated in a few groups. I've met dozens of flickrites and have been really thrilled when something I've said or a photo I've taken has resonated with someone an ocean away. The best example of this is the email I received from a guy in the UK who noticed a photo I'd posted of a tombstone at Vancouver's Mountain View Cemetery (and must have tagged with the deceased's name). He said they have been trying to track this long-lost ancestor for years and hadn't been able to figure out where he had ended up. My posting the photo of his grave let his relatives know he'd ended up in Vancouver. I was pleased to receive this email and happy to have helped someone with their genealogy even though that wasn't my intent.

The appeal of Facebook and Twitter is just totally passing me by here, folks. I'm not seeing any pros, only the cons (including more of life spent tethered to an electronic device, even if that tether is a wireless one). Is there something I'm missing here?