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And no snarky, just delete it, comments. I mean seriously?
There are many people on my facebook whose content I consume but dont interact with. And I know that it happens to me as well and is where the loneliness comes from.
How do you fix that without being creepy and showing all who've seen everything you post (which facebook tracks as it is surfaced in groups)?
I don't have a facebook account, and I find the idea of using it for keeping in touch with past acquaintances not very alluring and frankly a diatribe. You're not supposed to focus so much on other people's lives. Instead of people growing into better people through self defined improvement, people now seek gratification through others and their acknowledgment. Instead of going to a concert with a few choice friends…
It always surprises me how people are eager to project the foibles of people of all eras, onto modern technology. Suffice it to say that the right amount of social contact a person wants varies, and finding your place free of loneliness in society has been a challenge since well before Facebook.
You're right that people have also been widely varied in their preferences with social contact, but for lack of a better argument than an appeal to nature, this is different, and we don't know what the consequences are. At least the older ways of contacting people were time tested before the phone.
So how do you update or replace facebook with more meaningful interaction? And no snarky, just delete it, comments. I mean seriously? There are many people on my facebook whose content I consume but dont interact with. And I know that it happens to me as well and is where the loneliness comes from. How do you fix that without being creepy and showing all who've seen everything you post (which facebook tracks as it is…
Dr. Stallman also reminds us that Facebook is bad. It doesn't respect the users and their freedom against mass surveillance. http://stallman.org/facebook.html
Like all tools - judge it's usefulness, and use it appropriately.
Nevertheless, I would argue that the gain isn't measured in time - I think it's about the quality of the time spent.
We need free time - its the best way to "always work by choice", isn't it? Having the "power" to start and stop whenever you want, is a smart trick to make your work a lot more satisfactory as a process. Maybe if I had this perfect discipline in me and I didn't need such psychological tricks to help me, I could be as efficient without any free time what so ever, who knows ...
Yet as a regular human being, I need to feel free to work or not to.
But to make the most of my free time I've decided to distil the choices how to spend it down to a "better" list, so I don't need to try ripping this "pleasure" out of my schedule.
So I read random stuff, but on the top pages of Hacker News, I read random stuff but in my not-so-randomly selected list of blogs that I've subscribed or twitter feed, etc.
At the end, it's the same time I am away from my work, but the quality of that time, measured as helpful information I've digested is substantially higher, at the same (often higher) level of delight.
I don't have a facebook account, and I find the idea of using it for keeping in touch with past acquaintances not very alluring and frankly a diatribe. You're not supposed to focus so much on other people's lives. Instead of people growing into better people through self defined improvement, people now seek gratification through others and their acknowledgment. Instead of going to a concert with a few choice friends…
Yes, old acquaintances posting about minutia of there lives is of no value and can be down right irritating.
But the single most important function facebook provides is it turns acquaintances into friends. You can add people on Facebook that you've only meet once or twice before. You don't need to awkwardly ask for someone number or email or on the spot make future plans to meet up. You just look them up and you're instantly connected to them. You may learn they have a hobby in common with you or that they have an event that you're welcome to come to, and through the connection provided by Facebook you can strengthen your relations with people you find interesting.
For my real friends that I keep in touch with regularly facebook is more or less irrelevant - in fact most aren't even on my facebook. It's a nice platform to upload your photos to I guess, but honestly emailing a dropbox link is kinda nicer tbh.
So how do you update or replace facebook with more meaningful interaction? And no snarky, just delete it, comments. I mean seriously? There are many people on my facebook whose content I consume but dont interact with. And I know that it happens to me as well and is where the loneliness comes from. How do you fix that without being creepy and showing all who've seen everything you post (which facebook tracks as it is…
Take what I had for diner. Should I post that on HN? Absolutely not. Not contextually relevant. What about a blog post on Angular JS modules? Now that makes sense.
If facebook has a context like HN, or a meaningful way of identifying it like Reddit, then it has been lost on me. I mean, facebook's context is that it's an address book for your local social group right? So that must mean the context is contextually dependent on that right? I don't think that's 100% true. Facebook imparts it's own context. Which is basically sharing is caring. So it's context is basically content!
Long answer? Not sure...