the illusion of privacy and the reality of theft

All of the recent buzz about the latest phone hacking scandal has got me thinking about the internet and privacy. It seems to be common knowledge that anything posted online, or on a device that has online access, might be fair game for a hacker, yet we seem to be constantly surprised when something like this happens. And it keeps happening more and more often.

I think everyone has been looking at this situation the wrong way. Many people are sharing their unasked-for opinions that if the hacked celebrities involved didn't want their nude selfies shared with the world they never should have taken them to begin with. Thank you, Captain Obvious, but apart from that being textbook victim-shaming and blaming, it misses the point. The victims involved had items that belonged to them stolen. This argument is about as nonsensical as saying if you didn't want your car stolen, you never should have had one to begin with. Hacking is a crime, pure and simple.

There are countless know-it-all articles popping up on how to super-encrypt your email and Facebook so that this sort of thing couldn't happen to you. But after trying to double-authenticate my email I couldn't get in the next day via my phone, no matter how many times I tried the new code. How many people are going to go through all those extra steps to just check email (numerous times a day) on their phones, iPads, laptops, etc.?

Six years ago, after I had my daughter, I knew I wanted to have an expressive outlet, and toyed with starting a blog. But I was concerned about the privacy issue. A colleague who worked in the IT department told me that if anyone really wanted to get information about me, they could, blog or no blog. I decided to go for it, and I don't regret having an online presence, but I also don't kid myself that I can preserve any true sense of anonymity.

Regarding the morality of this particular situation, I can't help but feel for Jennifer Lawrence and all of the other celebrities. Not only are they going through the embarrassment of having intimate photos stolen and then shared, against their will, with the world, but they have been subject to the false morality and criticism of the same people who are eagerly viewing said photos while clutching their strands of pearls. There is nothing wrong with someone taking a nude photo of themselves, for themselves, or with the intention of sharing with a loved one. But having a bunch of them stolen and then posted on the web is another matter.

It's interesting to note that in the same week a member of a teen boy band, Calum Hood, of Five Seconds of Summer, had his own mini-scandal when he posted a video of his privates to a female fan on Snapchat, who then promptly uploaded it for the world to see. There is a big difference here, as he at least chose at first to share (if not overshare) his nude body, but the results are the same. Someone thought they were sharing an intimate photo with one person, and soon the whole world was the audience.

I have no doubt that Lawrence and others will weather this storm just fine. But it does call into question the morality of the internet and the hacker(s). This is not a Julian Assange sort of hacking. If one wants to peruse naked boobs and butts on the internet there are many, many sites that cater to those desires. But to grab photos of a famous person, against their will — there can be no other reason to do this except as a trophy or humiliation.

Related articles

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• Notes on a Scandal

sometimes i wish life was like thirtysomething

I definitely caught some of the show first run, but I always found the character of Hope insufferable. I mean, I always wanted to have a kid, and understand how that completely changes your life, but she seemed the essence of the obnoxious sort of mom who comes barreling at you down the sidewalk with her stroller, brandishing it as a weapon — "Step aside or be run over — baby on board." As if being a mom made her more important somehow. I don't get that.

In fact, most of the characters in thirtysomething, at one time or another, were pretty annoying. But I did love, if not the characters, their home. I loved their broken-down but charming house in Philadelphia. For one, it wasn't New York (where I lived at the time), so it escaped the pretensions attached to life in the big(gest) city. But mostly I loved the house because it was so welcoming. It wasn't the improbable sitcommy situation of Costanza or Elaine or Kramer always coming by Jerry's apartment. It was a big, warm house, a sort of hub for a ragtag group of people who had connections to each other, some close, some dependent on inter-relationships. It was a welcoming house, uptight Hope or not. I could believe that everyone wanted to drop by for a Sunday brunch of bagels and hang out. thirtysomething was a yuppie "message" show, but the '80s were like that.

I always wanted a house, a home like that. A place where my friends and family could feel they could drop by anytime and hang out. Raid the fridge (as well as stock it). Talk about the topics of the day. Drink or just watch television. I'm no longer thirty-something and I don't live in the suburbs. I don't even live near any of my friends anymore. I'm not sure if people I used to hang with are really still my friends. If you haven't seen or talked to someone in over a year are they still your friends? Facebook helps give the illusion of that. At least with the folks who bother to send you a message or "like" your posts.

I know that there are still a few true friends out there. But I don't have a cute Gary who will cruise by on his bike in the way home from work, or a quirky Melissa who will come and dump her latest boyfriend troubles at my door, neglecting to ask how I am. I kinda miss that.

For a while, in the late '80s, early '90s, I guess I had a quasi-thirtysomething thing going with my Brooklyn apartment. I had a fairly open door policy. Friends could drop by if they were in the neighborhood. Of course the Manhattanites rarely found themselves in Brooklyn (horrors!).

What we call today my BFF, my friend Mary, was also my roomie in that Park Slope apartment for a while and then got married but lived just around then corner — we were in and out of each other's apartments and lives all the time. I remember being hit hard with a stomach bug — the kind where just getting back and forth to the john is an effort — and she came over, an angel of mercy, with juice and soup and some trashy magazines. And this was way before texting and cell phones. I do miss that.

When I lived in D.C., my cousin Ann and I made a concerted effort to see each other often. She definitely had a thirtysomething house, where friends and family felt free to swing by often — and they did. The two of us maintained a "Sunday family dinner" date, even after my daughter was born and when our schedules got hectic. Even during her illness. But Ann died about a year and a half go and we left D.C. and that way of life seems finished.

We all grow up, and that unfortunately means that we also grow apart, either emotionally, or merely geographically. We've been here in Florida a little over a year so far and I'm still finding my way socially. I don't work outside the home, and I'm needing to be on hand more and more for an aging mother. It hasn't been easy to start a whole new real-life social network. I'm gearing up for another big change, leaving a job I've held for over a decade, and I'm not sure if I will feel even more isolated when that ends, or if I will finally be able to get out more and meet some new people.

The apartment where we live is certainly big enough to entertain. There's a doorman, so the act of dropping by might be a tad more formal than the days when someone used to ring my buzzer in Park Slope and I'd throw them the key inside of a sock or glove out the window, but it's still doable. I'm always up for a Sunday brunch or just yakking about a book or a movie. I like that.

the reader

I have been trying to streamline my online activity lately. I'm not sure it will result in me spending less time online, but at least maybe my time will be more organized. I basically have decided to abandon Google Reader. As useful as it once was, as a depository for interesting sites and blogs, I just don't check in there much anymore. Most of the blogs I really follow are in my blogroll. Any larger sites usually have a twitter or facebook page. So I basically went through the very long list of links and migrated them to my twitter or facebook.

Some blogs, mostly image tumblelogs, I had to let go by the wayside. As much as I love fabulous or interesting images, I have reached peak saturation. At least for the moment. And I just don't want to start a tumblr blog myself. It's a whole other "follow me" situation, and I've got enough content to follow at the moment. So that's the state of the 'net for me. Right now. In another few months, who knows, I may have had to restructure and restrategize once again.

Related articles

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no comment?

I find myself reading more and more blogs these days, but recently, commenting less and less. Everyone everywhere says that if you want to get more blog traffic for your own site, you should comment more, and I know it's true. But more than just racking up traffic, I like the interaction and the opportunity to acknowledge someone's post—how it may have interested or amused or even inspired me.

The enemy to commenting is of course, shyness—it's so much easier to lurk—and then, most importantly, time. If I had endless amounts of time and energy I would be writing more, reading more, commenting more. taking piano lessons—you name it. My only excuse for not leaving a comment is that I'm doing the best that I can, trying to hold up my blogging end as well as all the other ends in my life. A real conundrum towards leaving a comment came up recently when I was catching up with some older posts on a blog I like and I was suddenly struck by something in a post that made me want to comment. But how useful is it to comment on a weeks-old post? I know the internet never really expires. There are some old posts on my blog that still get a perplexing amount of traffic, mostly due to images and pop culture subject matter, I guess. But should I be polite, still drop a line, to say I've stopped by? Late as it is? Or will the blogger's traffic-meter tell them that story? I know that for me, sometimes a quick check of my stats is enough, to know that I am not just a voice crying out in the wilderness. What is the proper blog comment etiquette in this situation?

Being an artist, a writer, is first and foremost, a solitary activity. When all is said in done you are basically doing it for yourself, because even if no one else, not even your mom, reads it, you'd still be drawn to do it anyway. That's what being an artist is for me. Being compelled. BUT ... the other side of this is the need to communicate. So when you find that folks have seen or read your work it is extremely gratifying. Even if at first it is just a handful of loyal or coerced friends and the googlebots. It still helps.

So you steam on, inspired by that teeniest bit of encouragement, as well as your racing mind, which inevitably jumps from one topic to the next—"if they liked that, then they'll love this"—or just the desire and ability to share. I have often wondered, in my new, internet life, at the plethora of forums available to me and whether I should expand or contract, or to concentrate. I don't have any definitive answers. I think with " new" media there really aren't any limits—anything goes as to where you should post or connect. But the same questions have come up regarding my content, too. Different forums require different types of sharing. Some folks have counseled me that I should make my blog about something quite specific. I have thought long and hard about that. Is it a diary? A platform for pop-culture review? A way to keep friends and family up-to-date on my family's doings? Yes, yes, and yes. Sometimes it's just a photoblog, sometimes it's a rant. Sometimes a nostalgia piece, sometimes a critical review or opinion piece. Just like me. Like others in my jack-of-all-trades family, I just can't and won't be limited to one style. And I'm OK with that. Anyone who just wants to check in for some recent photos can get that. If those bore them and they prefer a critical take on a book recently read or a movie recently seen, they can skip ahead.

But back to the commenting. A work colleague told me that she attended some web 2.0 conference last year where one of the speakers was saying that comments were "over" and that most blogs would be disabling them in future. I'm not sure what future that speaker was talking about, because I haven't really run across any blogs where you can't post a comment, or this non-trend. If anything, the ability to comment is what is driving blogging and social media. The comments section is the new letter to the editor. If you know the person, and are commenting on their blog or their facebook page, you are replacing email. Lots of the blogs I read, I read expressly for the comments—to gauge if other folks think like me about what the writer is saying. Many blogs I used to check out I have also ceased to read for the same reason—the comments. Blogs mainly centered on celebrity, like tmz or dListed, I once considered entertaining, but now I no longer visit, because their comments are just an excuse for anonymous folks to get nasty or stupid. Salon, which used to have interesting articles, now seems to have stupid articles with interesting comments.

I guess this is a long way of saying that I am going to try to take the time to comment as much as I can in the future. If I can read, I can comment. Again, I think I should be commenting for myself first, because I think that's the right thing to do. If someone comments back on my comment, or clicks my name to check out my blog, my writing, then that's just icing on the cake. In fact, I think I am going to take it a step further and when I find a blog or a post I like, I'm going to not only comment, but feature that post or blogger on my blog. Blog it forward.

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scrapping over scrapple

My friend Mario shared this link on facebook a while ago (and was re-sharing, so undoubtedly it is making the rounds), but I have been thinking about commenting, and facebook, and the "death" of print recently and wanted to re-re share, with a twist.

The short article recounts how in 1872, a hot letters-to-the-editor debate broke out in the pages of the New York Times over the delights (or horrors, depending on your position) of Scrapple. If you sign up for a free subscription you can read the referenced Times articles, but I also include the original letter from "Epicure" here:

I'm from New Jersey, but I'm not sure I have ever eaten Scrapple, and have probably confused it with head cheese, which seems equally disgusting, but eminently practical and old-world, in its desire to use just about every part of the animal for food, wasting nothing. Epicure not only extolled the economical aspects of making Scrapple, but its delicious taste.

After Epicure wrote his article, the pseudonymous responses flooded in, from readers Porcupine, Physician, and A Good Liver, to name a few. How different is this from blogs or facebook, where folks share an article, an idea, a song, a video and then their friends or audience weighs in, re-shares, flames, or endorses the original digital missive? Humans like to engage in debate, and verbal debates can range from the sublimely witty to the crass and ridiculous. A trend being discussed in blogs lately is whether to ditch the comments option altogether, with the blogger including an email address if a reader has something to say. This idea seems to be promoted by folks who still don't understand what social media or human interaction is about. If you take away the possibility of conversation, why are you bothering to blog at all?

A few years ago you might have heard the lament that email was killing good old-fashioned letter writing. Maybe temporarily, email reigned supreme. But the past few years it has become clear that email is functional and necessary as a tool at work, but for social communication email is a dinosaur, much like the yearly "letter" that people send around the holidays, updating their friends and family on all their exciting accomplishments throughout the year. Who is going to bother to read that? If you really wanted your friends and family to know what your life is like, you'd friend them on facebook or follow them on twitter or update your blog.

But back to the great Scrapple debate of 1872. The letters were written at a time when letter-writing was the primary mode of communication for public debate, apart from the neighborhood soapbox. The world is changing and newsprint is becoming a less-viable medium. But the debate is still raging, and always will. On the internet, on talk shows, through company websites. Everyone has an opinion, and modern-day Porcupines, Physicians, and Epicures can share and open and re-open the debate. Dive in everyone. And to take a twist on McLuhan, it doesn't matter which medium you choose to use. It's the message you want to share. But I'll pass on the Scrapple. Thanks.

mean girls and boys

Recently posted by a facebook friend was a link to a website only in existence since August, 2009, People of Walmart.

I started flipping through the photos of bad fashion, etc. and then flipped away. I can't argue with the fact that some people wear some pretty short shorts or see-through outfits that most folks would be afraid to sport in public. But to write a nasty caption below each picture just seemed juvenile and nasty. And posting someone's unflattering photo online without their consent, while not strictly illegal, definitely is not a positive human action.

Sorry, not a "LOL" as advertised.


Lolcats

I kept thinking about the crappy site, considering a caveat on facebook, and then flipped back and looked at the "About Us" section, to see what was the justification for this exercise in humiliation. What a bunch of cowards. "AJK," "ADK," and "LDW" could have included photos of themselves in some horrible outfits in the superstore's aisles and then it might have been a little less depressing, or at the very least a lame attempt to get in on the joke.

I recently read a comment on a website that pointed out a link to obesity and lower-incomes. Poorer folks don't have the money to spend on a lot of the other distractions - nights out at the theater, expensive clothes, jewelry, etc., etc. that make some folks who have the money to spend on such entertainments feel like they are treating themselves. But a poor person can surely super-size their meal or buy some Krispy Kremes for a snack. In its posting of pictures of folks shopping, this website was pointing out mostly fat people. And ridiculing them. Sigh.

I hate to be ageist, but I truly think that the crew of idiots who put this together and others who might think that it's LOL-worthy must be, frankly, twenty-somethings. Being twice as old as these jokers I just don't find it worthwhile to hide behind a veil of superiority to make myself seem "cool." That is a pose sought by the young. At least I hope they are just young and stupid. Only someone who hasn't lived, hasn't struggled, has been so far in their lives cosseted from depression, loss, or bad luck could put something like this together.

They at least are featuring their critics along with their fans. My fear is that link on their site is just some smart-ass cocky badge of courage. But there is no courage here. Only meanness.

livingsocial

LivingSocial is a facebook app that has taken me (and many of my friends) by storm. The LivingSocial website describes itself as a place where a person can catalog his or her "collections" and share these likes and dislikes with others. On facebook it's seems like an image database, run not very differently than many other facebook quizzes. A question is posed: name five films that twisted your mind? What are your five favorite kid shows? What five albums shaped you? You rack your brain, type the answer, and hopefully up pops the appropriate album, movie or cartoon thumbnail. This game is of course frustrating, as we are all fascinating creatures who certainly have more faves than the magic number of five (five thumbnails fits ever-so-conveniently on a computer screen, however.) It's so frustrating that we want to play it again. And again. And again.

The power of facebook is that you're not just waxing nostalgic in a vacuum. Once I proclaim that my five greatest television shows were Angel, Buffy, I Love Lucy, The Odd Couple and The Tudors all my friends can see it and my fellow Buffy fans are revealed. Who knew? And they post their faves in the same and other categories until there is a pop culture back-and-forth frenzy of posting.

Movies that warped my mind
A Clockwork Orange, Blue Velvet, Brazil, After Hours, Orphee [1950].

What makes this particular app more appealing than the countless other memes and quizzes that populate facebook is the power of the visual. Most of the movies, books, etc. have an appropriate icon. You get to see a visual capsule of a person's tastes. It is also quite enjoyable to dredge up one's personal mythos, albeit via pop culture as diverse as Clockwork Orange and The Flintstones.

Most importantly, this app understands the basic premise of facebook - put yourself out there and see who will respond. Use your past and present to define who you are. We live in a random, high-speed society and social randomness is where it's at. The only thing I can't figure out is why they haven't made all the books, shows and movies we're citing clickable to Amazon...

blog, blog, blog

I am really trying hard to keep up with the daily posting. A friend told me the other day that I am a professional blogger since I have ads on my site. Yet to see any $$$ from those, but that's not why I'm doing it.

At work I have taken over the helm of the blog as well. We folks of a certain age are not just getting into facebook and twitter, we're taking over the internet. Or at least finally understanding some of the internet's potential beyond porn and Wikipedia.

I have a lot of thoughts about what all this means and will be posting more as they develop. For now, I am just happy to be participating and sharing what I'm up to and checking out what everyone else is up to, too.

Happy blogging, everyone!

that 100 books meme

This meme has been floating around facebook and I'm sure beyond, but I've felt oddly dissatisfied after completing my list, as so many great titles were missing. Even after the list was "exposed" (thanks, for the link Markin), I still have been thinking about missing books. A bibliophile? You bet. So here is my stab at some if the most important books in my life to date.

1. D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths by Ingri and Edgar Parin D'Aulaire - has a no-nonsense approach in its prose but also doesn't back away from the intricacies and sheer craziness of Greek Gods' romances and antics. Pair that with the incredible lithograph illustrations and it's simply an amazing book. I have been scooping up all of this husband and wife team's titles for my daughter (and me) which are thankfully coming back into print.

2-4. A. A. Milne - The House at Pooh Corner, When We Were Very Young, Now We are Six - Everyone knows Disney's Winnie the Pooh, but I first met Christopher Robin and Co. through the originals - my mom's childhood books, which I still treasure. The words and the Ernest Shepard illustrations are wonderful.

5-8. Garth Williams - As wonderful as E.B. White's Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan are, what ties them together for me are the illustrations of Garth Williams. I even love his Golden Books like Baby Farm Animals.

9. Norton Juster The Phantom Tollbooth - Where else can a kid learn a word like dodecahedron and love it? One of the best books ever with wonderful illustrations by Jules Pfeiffer.

10. James Thurber Many Moons - the illustrations by Louis Slobodkin add to this wonderful alternate princess tale.

11. Richard Scarry is another of the best children's books illustrators around. Any of his books are a delight, but I grew up loving the collection Richard Scarry's Best Storybook Ever! which is still in print.

12-15. Dr. Seuss - The wonderful use of language, the fantastic drawings - Dr. Seuss is beyond compare. The Sneetches has always been a favorite, but of course The Cat on the Hat, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Lorax are tops, too.

16-19. Louisa May Alcott Little Women - I devoured all of these one summer, but the first book is the best one. I'll never really forgive her for Bess or how she sloughed off Laurie on the annoying Amy, but that shows how involved I was. (Little Men, Jo's Boys, Eight Cousins)

20-21. The Secret Garden and A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Classics, and for a good reason.

22. T. S. Eliot Complete Poems & Plays - My mom used to read us poems from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats (no, I've never seen the musical).

Macavity's a ginger cat, he's very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly doomed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he's half asleep, he's always wide awake.

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity,
For he's a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.

When I was in college I borrowed it when we were reading The Hollow Men.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Now after getting into the Plantagenets I look forward to reading his play about Beckett and Henry II, Murder in the Cathedral.

23-28. Agatha Christie - Originally my mom's books, I probably borrowed, kept, and then read all of them more than once, but am particularly fond of the Hercule Poirot mysteries. Escapist puzzle fun for sure, but what makes me reread them is the microcosm of British society and mores of the 30s, 40s and beyond as viewed through her upper-middle-class eyes. A society that no longer exists, but is fun to visit from time to time. Plus, a lot of her books feature artists as characters. Favorites include The Hollow, And Then There Were None, After the Funeral, Towards Zero, Five Little Pigs and The ABC Murders.

29-31. Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbarr series. I got the Agatha Christies from mom and the grittier mysteries from my dad. Scudder prowls the very familiar (to me) New York and Brooklyn streets, continually battling the bottle, crime and his own history. Block uses real locations, which is satusfying for any reader with a knowledge of the city. Burglar Bernie is in the same New York, but with light fingers and a lighter touch. Favorites include When the Sacred Ginmill Closes, A Walk Among the Tombstones, Burglars Can't Be Choosers.

32. Also inherited from dad was a love of sci-fi and short stories. Ray Bradbury's Illustrated Man. "The Veldt." Nuff said.

33-34. Mary Renault's Theseus series is a perfect retelling of an ancient myth, making the characters believable and human. I would love to write book like The King Must Die and its successor, The Bull From the Sea.

35-39. I recently came across historical novelist Sharon Kay Penman and her The Sunne in Splendour and I haven't looked back. Her Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II trilogy When Christ and His Saints Slept, Time and Chance, and Devil's Brood, is excellent. Happily there are more books for me to read, including a historical mystery series, starting with The Queen's Man.

40-44. Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur is a wonderful read and gave me a background I could bring to such diverse favorites as Monty Python and the Holy Grail and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Another couple of favorites along this line are The Lais of Marie de France, Chretien de Troyes's Perceval and Arthurian Romances.

45. I read Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams for an art theory class in college and had some of the most vivid dreams of my life. The book also reads like a mystery in parts, other parts just plain interesting.

46. Claude Levi-Strauss The Naked Man is an anthropology classic, but is also very interesting for a fan of mythology.

47. Arthur Rimbaud Illuminations has some gorgeous poems, in French and English.

48-49. I also read Voltaire's Candide for French class and then bought Tartarin de Tarascon while on vacation in southern France years later. The only two books I've read in a foreign language and really felt like I could get into the "head" of the language. They both happen to be very funny, which might have helped.

50-51. Shakespeare's Hamlet and Macbeth. I've read most of the plays, either for school or for pleasure, but these two are the ones that have stayed with me. The language is just amazing.

52-53. Robert Graves I Claudius and Claudius the God. More great historical fiction, meticulously researched, which has changed how we view the early Roman emperors.

54-74. Alexander McCall Smith is just a delight and beyond prolific. His entire Ladies #1 Detective Agency series is wonderful, with heroine Precious Ramotswe gently guiding the reader and the books' characters through life's deeper questions. He continues the philosophical trend in his series set in Edinburgh, The Sunday Philosophy Club. And his installment-driven 44 Scotland Street series is just as engaging. We recently picked up one of his children's books, which also looks to be lots of fun.

75. Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber is an amazing collection of short stories based on fairy tales, including the wonderful "The Bloody Chamber" and "The Company of Wolves."

O.K. There's 75 for a start! Obviously I've read more than 100 great books. I've tried to start cataloging my books in LibraryThing, but found it too daunting and time-consuming. As much fun as it's been to try to put together this list, it's a lot more fun to read the books. And I haven't even scratched the surface of my to-read pile yet...

home again, home again

Continuing yesterday's train of thought, if what I suspect about facebook and its effect on how we form and maintain friendships is true, than what will this mean for my daughter's generation?

She is in preschool with kids she has known since she was seven months old, already very remote from my childhood experience, barring growing up with my baby brother. Some friends have already moved on, attending kindergarten earlier, based on their birthday or school policies. So far she has been able to keep up with them. via the occasional playdate. Next year it will splinter off even more, with kids attending kindergarten based on where they live, rather than where their parents work. If this was my childhood, of oh so many years ago, that would be that. But with tools like facebook, she could theoretically keep in touch with babyhood pals throughout her life. I already am a facebook friend with parents of some of the kids that moved on last year, so the connections have been forged.

What will it mean for her to never be out of touch? Will she be living in an "internet small town" that functions like the sorts of towns you see in the movies where everyone knows everyone else? How ironic that some "communities" will be so closely knit, when the family in the next apartment might be total strangers.

I can't know any of this for sure, but it seems a logical progression. Some might be put off by the prospect, but it occurs to me that when we form friendships as children, they are tight, loyal, and full of love and other intense feelings. It might not be so bad to carry on such relationships virtually, even as a person moves on geographically. Maybe holding on to the loves and friendships of childhood will create a more loving, less anxious generation. I hope so.

you CAN go home again

I been thinking lately that facebook is really affecting our lives (at least the bazillion or so who are using it.) If we don't all get bored and replace it with virtual sky-diving or whatever, the patterns of our lives will continue to change. We know that we are more mobile than our grandparents' generation, but the Internet is facilitating a more subtle change from our parents'. We used to be able to think of our lives as phases, or stages, mostly broken up by school, family, etc.

For instance, my life can be divided into: childhood, spent mostly with Mom, elementary school, high school, college, the drifting you do after college, adulthood, job1, job2, job3, etc. My parents moved quite a bit when we were kids, so these divisions are even geographical in some cases. With each "stage" there was also a new group of friends. As I moved on (or was moved) most likely those friendships petered out or were forgotten. This is a sad, but typical part of growing up, which I had to get used to. But I am on facebook now, and miraculously have been put back in touch with people from my past that I had lost track of or who had lost track of me.

So what will this do to my sense of the past being the past?

If I am nostalgic for college, I don't have to try and root out some old photos and notebooks and sigh and think, whatever became of...all I have to do is check my updates and see that one friend is making chili for dinner, another is feeling frustrated about something, and another is making travel plans. They can look at my status and see that I just had a hot chocolate. I can even compartmentalize my friends by each period of my life or by location. And what about that one cool person from the not-so-cool job you both left years ago? Never going to see her again - but no, there she is, living in Florida. We can have a virtual Margarita together. With salt, if you please.

Facebook is even infiltrating into my family history. My Uncle John was always talking about his grandfather's brother, and how they both left Italy. Apparently his grandfather got on one boat, which landed in New York and that's where our branch of the family settled, and the other brother took a boat which headed for South America, possibly Argentina, and was never heard from again. A big family mystery that no one could ever solve, until...I don't have the full story yet, but I have been, through facebook, in contact with a whole new, young generation of folks with my same last name in Argentina, Chile, Spain and Italy. Pretty amazing.

What will this all mean? Will our lives become just one big blur, with past, present, and future all smushed together? Well, they probably already were, but facebook facilitates the blurring. I can't see anything really bad about any of this, but it is a little freaky sometimes to post an update and generate comments from a co-worker, a cousin, in Spanish, someone I haven't seen since high school, and an old college chum. But this is my blurry, modern, life.