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Confused Facebook user debacle not what it seems.

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Re: Confused Facebook user debacle not what it seems.

#51

Post by iron_ball »

avdempsey wrote: post #26
encoderer wrote: post #17

I think the author of this blog has a view of "society" that is a little myopic. The premise that the "structure of today's society" is based on facebook and the web is, I think, something several hundred million people in this country would disagree with. The internet itself is not yet one of the few pieces of technology that is intractably ingrained in our societal DNA. On that list? I don't know. Cars. Telephones.…

13 year old Americans (in families that can afford a computer with broadband) will have their whole social lives cataloged on Facebook or its successor. Indeed, even younger children will have their milestones shared by their eager parents, until they are old enough to take over. This is the divide: those who've had the ultimate social family tree preserved in a convenient database, and those who go on a road trip to…

Overly optimistic. When Facebook dies -- and let us assume it will some day die -- who will import its data and carry on? Who will archive it? They save everything, today, but I doubt "long-term store of knowledge about individual humans" is one of their explicit design goals.

Re: Confused Facebook user debacle not what it seems.

#52

Post by robryan »

encoderer wrote: post #47
someplacecold wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said that the internet is not something that society absolutely cannot function without. He is wrong. Society very much depends on the internet. The fact that not everyone has a Faceboook profile is inconsequential to this, and I would point out that the one does not follow the other. Further, saying that the failure lies in the fact that we need to "make software just as intuitive as older technology", is just hi…

This is, honestly, absurd. Society depends on the internet? Sure, some people depend on the internet. And some companies. And some verticals. But "depends" sounds to me like... without it, society will crumble or go through some dramatic metamorphosis. I find that... questionable to say the least. I don't remember much about the 1980s, I was 8, but I'm faily certain it wasn't the dark ages as it seems you're suggesti…

Individual people don't need to be on the internet but if the internet as a whole were to disappear society would crumble. No one is saying that the 80's were a dark age but things we could previously manage without the internet have now become totally dependent on the internet and more and more things are every day.

Re: Confused Facebook user debacle not what it seems.

#53

Post by kevinpet »

someplacecold wrote: post #36
endlessvoid94 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not arguing the web isn't important. He's saying that for a TON of people, they don't need to use it personally, and see no reason to put in the (sometimes) massive amount of effort to learn how to use the web. Their lives go on just fine without their direct involvement. Also, it is useless to cry "How terrible that so many people don't understand! What a failure!" -- The only failure here is the failure to mak…

He said that the internet is not something that society absolutely cannot function without. He is wrong. Society very much depends on the internet. The fact that not everyone has a Faceboook profile is inconsequential to this, and I would point out that the one does not follow the other. Further, saying that the failure lies in the fact that we need to "make software just as intuitive as older technology", is just hi…

Society can't function without ignition coils, but I'd wager that 90% of the world can't even vaguely articulate what role they serve.

There's a big difference between society depending on a handful of people understanding how something works, and society depending on most people understanding how something works. For some examples of the latter, you're operating at a serious disadvantage if you can't drive a car, address an envelope, or dial a long distance call.

Re: Confused Facebook user debacle not what it seems.

#54

Post by dzohrob »

char wrote: post #40
citatus wrote: post #35

When lawyers go drinking together they laugh at stories of criminals who don't even understand the basics of evidence law. When doctors have coffee breaks they share stories about how modern people don't even understand the difference between a virus and a bacteria and demand antibiotics for the common cold. Latin professors share hilarious pictures of people who have tattooed themselves with incoherently mistranslat…

This is likely true. However, using the Internet isn't a profession. It is a globally-scaled phenomenon that is essentially 'the future'. Anyone can learn how to use it and become an 'expert' for basically no cost and little time. People get made fun of not necessarily for being dunces, but for not choosing to embrace and learn about a technology that is already a huge part of their lives.

Using the human body isn't a profession either. But it's likely that you and I are significantly more ignorant than a doctor regarding its inner workings despite using our bodies every day.

Re: Confused Facebook user debacle not what it seems.

#55

Post by astrec »

Our biggest site serves a nation of ~21 million, does ~3.5 million UBs (standard UB caveats apply) and derives 28.94% of it's traffic from Google organic.

I have to scroll down to keyword number 34 to find a phrase that is not some permutation of our domain name (which is also our hero brand name). The actual domain name accounts for 7.12% of these referrals, keywords 1-33 around 73%.

Out of interest, direct traffic is 38.66%

As amusing as the RRW debacle was, this is the way a significant segment of the population use the web.

Re: Confused Facebook user debacle not what it seems.

#56

Post by char »

dzohrob wrote: post #54
char wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is likely true. However, using the Internet isn't a profession. It is a globally-scaled phenomenon that is essentially 'the future'. Anyone can learn how to use it and become an 'expert' for basically no cost and little time. People get made fun of not necessarily for being dunces, but for not choosing to embrace and learn about a technology that is already a huge part of their lives.

Using the human body isn't a profession either. But it's likely that you and I are significantly more ignorant than a doctor regarding its inner workings despite using our bodies every day.

Of course. But my point wasn't that 'things that aren't professions are easy to learn about', it was that 'using the Internet IS easy to learn, and requires few resources.' The fact that using the human body isn't a profession is completely irrelevant; doctors spend years studying how our bodies work, while all I do is some occasional research to learn more about it. Of course they know more than me, because they spent lots of time and money on it.

Re: Confused Facebook user debacle not what it seems.

#57

Post by daemin »

My take on this is that these are the reasons why things like the iPad will succeed, namely locked down single purpose devices that do one thing at a time well. Essentially Internet based appliances.

They will succeed primarily as some people (evidenced by this article) only use the Internet to do a few specific things and don't know of, or don't want to know of the specifics (address bar, search bar, certificates, etc) of using the internet in general. Therefore they will have their device with the icons of the things they use on the home screen, and not really venture into using a browser at all, just use the specific applications. Thus no more worrying about how to access Facebook or navigating a browser properly, they'll just click (tap) the Facebook icon and they are there.

Re: Confused Facebook user debacle not what it seems.

#58

Post by donaq »

iron_ball wrote: post #51
avdempsey wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

13 year old Americans (in families that can afford a computer with broadband) will have their whole social lives cataloged on Facebook or its successor. Indeed, even younger children will have their milestones shared by their eager parents, until they are old enough to take over. This is the divide: those who've had the ultimate social family tree preserved in a convenient database, and those who go on a road trip to…

Overly optimistic. When Facebook dies -- and let us assume it will some day die -- who will import its data and carry on? Who will archive it? They save everything, today, but I doubt "long-term store of knowledge about individual humans" is one of their explicit design goals.

Well, Geocities used to be a behemoth only a company with mega resources like Yahoo could undertake. When it went down, a few individuals archived most of it [citation needed]. I'd imagine that if and when Facebook goes down, something along those lines might happen.

Re: Confused Facebook user debacle not what it seems.

#59

Post by encoderer »

someplacecold wrote: post #50
encoderer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is, honestly, absurd. Society depends on the internet? Sure, some people depend on the internet. And some companies. And some verticals. But "depends" sounds to me like... without it, society will crumble or go through some dramatic metamorphosis. I find that... questionable to say the least. I don't remember much about the 1980s, I was 8, but I'm faily certain it wasn't the dark ages as it seems you're suggesti…

HA! You just don't get it. ALL the processes for which the internet provides a mission-critical service are going to freeze. What happens when MasterCard suddenly can't access the balance of its creditees anymore? What happens when you need your social security check? What happens when you need money from a bank? Who's tracking stocks? How are you going to get all your important emails, or your contacts, or your off-…

Are you kidding?

You have no notion of the resiliency of our economy or our history as a civilization if you think that "pulling the plug" on the internet would be some crippling event.

Yes, business would be affected. But our civilization would collapse? I mean, you think people would just start hording guns and food because the INTERNET stopped working?

If Mastercard couldn't use the internet, you know what it would do? It would use banks of dedicated lines and dial-up modems to process cards, the same way it still does to this very day in most businesses.

I get that you live and breath this stuff, so do I. But you should seriously consider subjecting yourself to a liberal arts education. You need perspective. Our civilization has survived amazing adversity. Pandemics. World Wars. Revolutions. You think the internet would break us? Seriously?

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