Facebook and Death

Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, and whatever future sites and technologies replace them, we will all be acutely aware when every single person we know dies.

At the moment it's not so obvious. Most of the Facebook generation is young, and the individuals who use these online tools are the ones more likely to be able to afford a computer and so less likely to be living in conditions that make them more likely to die young. (Got that?) But in twenty years or so, when our generation starts heading into late middle age and heart attacks and strokes begin to take their toll, it will become an increasingly regular occurrence to find out, via Newsfeed or Tweet, that someone you once knew passed on. The kids you went to high school with and haven't seen since that reunion. The ex, or the weekend fling, whom you stopped talking to long ago. The former co-worker (the one you flirted with, the one you rivaled with), your former best friend's boyfriend's kid sister, your college professors.

It will be strange, I imagine. It will be the saddest part of our wide-cast net of human awareness. It is easy now - or used to be easier - to travel through life as if walking through woods; your nearby companions are right there with you, and some friendlier acquaintances and more distant relatives are occasionally obscured by the trees and undergrowth, and way off in the distance showing their faces only when crossing a meadow are those folks you only maintain the most casual of contact with. On such a passage, a distant individual might stop appearing for years (or for ever), and you'd never know the difference; they could just have taken a slight detour behind the thickets. Your view allows some knowledge that there is a whole world out there, but it is mainly a personal, close-knit journey.

Thanks to these social connection innovations, the path we take, or will take, will be more like that on a great, flat plain, or maybe inside an infinitely large glass building with see-through tubes and bridges everywhere, or even on the inside of a Ringworld. You can see for miles and miles, and there are a LOT of people out there; only the horizon obscures them from view. If that fellow you friended after talking music tastes with at the bus stop twenty years ago and never spoke to again suddenly drops down dead, you can see it happen even at that great distance; especially because you can see all the people closer to him turning their heads, like rubbernecking on the highway.

As we get older, there will be more and more bodies littering the clearsighted landscape. (In this metaphor, there may still be distant forests in which the older, unconnected generations are walking largely unseen; only the younger generations traverse the vast plain, at least at the moment.) Mortality everywhere. I suspect, and I hope, that it will actually bring us all closer together - if your traveling companions drop off while tramping through the woods with you, you're suddenly alone; but in this wide-open landscape, you can see that way off over there are some other folks looking lonely, and you can cross the distance to join them.

The only question is, as this blogger asks, is if we'll be able to control the social-network announcement of our own deaths. As she points out, an individual might not want to have their Facebook page memorialized or their friends to announce their passing online. Do we have the right - or ability - to take ourselves out of the landscape? As social networks become more prominent, does a person have some (legal or moral) propriety over their cybersphere presence? Most likely, no matter how strenously a person objects, in the near future no one will be able to prevent their online presence.

Stuff to think about. And if you're curious, this article describes the current Facebook policy towards death of a member.

So, to sum up plainly: I think it’s highly likely that in our futures we will remain continually aware of the basic life-status of nearly everyone we ever meet; at the very least we’ll be aware of anytime someone dies. In the past, someone you lost touch with would simply disappear from your sphere of knowledge and you’d probably never find out if they outlived you or not. Thus, we’ll see far more death than any previous generation. But at the same time – I hope – this will ultimately make us less lonely and more connected.

You're a Twit

I love the Twitter debate. Just love it.

What I love most is how polarizing it seems to be. Love it or hate it? And everyone in between just seems so overwhelmingly perplexed. I think almost without fail, the first 'post' (or tweet, or twit, depending on your level on contempt) seems to be something like the phrase "seriously? is this it?"

No one needs to make a list of internet fads - websites that are wildly popular one moment and leave the public's care just as fast seems to happen all the time. In fact, it surprised me to hear recently that Myspace was celebrating just its 5 year birthday. I feel like Myspace has been around forever! Facebook, Purevolume, Napster. All have had huge staying power but overall have not been around very long - especially when one thinks about how long the internet has been around, and will be around.

Where Twitter falls on the proverbial dart board is a heated debate. I for one, believe it will have huge staying power, with the potential to become almost, but not quite, as integrated as Facebook and Google into the fabric of the internet. When I tell people this though, I get some extremely heated responses. I love that.

There always seems to be three very clear, distinct, and immediate reactions to something new, and not just in the technology sphere. There's one circle that immediately rejects, another that immediately embraces, and the third, a "silent majority," if you will allow me to utilize some 70's political lingo. The third group is the wait and see, the independents, and they'll be the ones to actually decide which way things go.

The thing is, I see the potential. One day soon, when everyone's phone is also an mp3-playing, internet-surfing, GPS, walkie talkie, video game consol, emailing device... I expect a tool like Twitter to be ideal. I do not yet have one of these contraptions; my bulky Verizon LG is doing just fine thank you (yeah, that one >>).

The key to the success of Twitter will of course be if can come up with a realistic business model for revenue. Twitter has said it plans to announce a revenue plan this year.

Dont' be surprised if Oprah's show - yes, that Oprah Winfrey who has had a love affair with Michael Phelps and is also #6 on my list of really rich people who are most likely to pull off being Batman - becomes the platform for such an announcment later today. Ashton Kutcher - who’s on track to be the first with 1 million followers on Twitter - will be her guest. Twitter co-founder Evan Williams is also expected to make an appearance.

One day, when I'm in downtown DC for some reason, and I tweet this fact into my phone, and a friend calls me to hang out soon after because they too happen to be downtown, and knew where I was because I told my phone so, then Twitter will have improved my life.

And while waiting for my friend to arrive, I can check the daily major headline news just by being on Twitter because my cheap and effective subscriptions to news services like nbclocaldc will keep me updated with news and links to their website, then Twitter will have improved my life.

And when planning my weekend, I can Tweet to a pre-specified circle of friends asking what I'll be up to later that night to let them know, then Twitter will have improved my life.

And when bored out of my mind, I can check Twitter for random links from friends and stalk people like we all used to with AOL - except now with less effort - then Twitter will have improved my life.

And when I stop talking to people eye-to-eye and only have conversations through Twitter, I will officially be a twit, and Twitter will have ruined my life.

These Gentlemen are Gunna Twitter the Tweet Out of You

That's right, TheseGentlemen are now on Twitter! Whether or not you think this is the future of the communication age or the decline of civilization, we here at These Gentlemen are embracing the future of technology and information sharing.

We'll be using the Twitter account to provide real-time blog updates and other tidbits of info we'd like to share. We hope to invoke even more discussion amongst the group by soliciting questions, and plan to bring people together by advertising future These Gentlemen events.

Also, please check out the updating twitter status on the right column --->