In your Face! Reflections on ten years from nerd-dom to world domination

Better get the fire extinguishers ready, cos Facebook turns ten this week. OK, so ten candles isn’t so many, but if you multiply that by more than a billion users around the world, we’re talking about a serious global fire hazard.

Now when you or I turned ten, we were still pretty unsophisticated, probably still partial to an afternoon creating new worlds with our Lego or zooming out in front of the Saturday morning cartoons on the goggle box. But Facebook is rather more precocious than that. And, these days, pretty much omnipotent.

It now touches every aspect of life for many of us. Flirtations blossom (and resulting relationships not being considered ‘real’ until your Facebook status says so). Old friendships that have been eroded by time and distance are rekindled (sometimes to the detriment of more recent, flesh-based ones). News spreads like wildfire (as do fake rumours and occasionally hateful propaganda). Business is conducted through cyberspace (though sometimes not in reality). Random silliness is shared to brighten our mundane days (and inane games created to annoy the hell out of us).

Like life or ‘The Force’ in Star Wars, Facebook has its light and its dark sides. The light side can bring the personal touch back into a world where we are increasingly isolated, forming unlikely alliances that can develop into long-term meaningful friendships. It can give us a voice when we feel like we’re shouting into the void. It can connect us with people with whom we can – if so inclined – make a difference.

The dark side can be a vehicle for trolls and predators, cyber-bullying, hate campaigns, false information and a neglected life offline. It’s well documented and undeniable, but is that dark side the rotten apple in the Facebook barrel that means we should throw the whole harvest out? I don’t think so.

Like so much that has come before, Facebook (and the Internet in general) has been rightfully accused of eroding our values and eating into our precious time. But then, the printing press threatened the vocal tradition of story-telling; the typewriter brought fears that it would sound the death knell for calligraphy and letter-writing; television was expected to kill the art of conversation and dumb us down in general. All those accusations have some basis in truth – but ONLY when we, as users, permit it.

You want proof? Well, stories are still told. Letters are still written. And we are still talking.

Just because you’re on Facebook, it doesn’t mean you’ve got to play Candy Crush and post photos of yourself doing a drunken duckface at every opportunity. Nor does being on Twitter mean you tweet what you had for breakfast and cyber-stalk celebrity accounts (most of which are actually written and run by unpaid interns hired by the star’s management).

Humans are, by definition, social. Even the grumpiest, most interpersonally dysfunctional of us needs to connect with other people on some level or another, and smart guys by Mark Zuckerberg saw an opportunity to make money out of that fundamental need. Good on him, says I. Can’t blame him for grabbing the opportunity and running with it.

But let’s not make the mistake of becoming drones, pulled along by the tides of social media and washed by the waves of dross and debris it brings with it.

Just as with the printed word, typewriters and TV, social media has the potential to do harm and dehumanise. But let’s not forget the benefits those developments have brought – the printing press led to the gradual spread of literacy throughout society, typewriters made it possible for information and ideas to be spread more widely, and television is not just Celebrity Big Brother – it’s also David Attenborough and the New Year’s Day concert from Vienna. All this, and more, applies equally to the online world.

Just let’s not forget, it’s no substitute for real life.

Technology is a tool, something we should use to enrich and ease our lives - not replace them. But we human beings are fatally flawed and we just don't to know when to stop, do we? 

Thanks to the massive splurge of easily-accessible communications, there’s a dangers of forgetting the joys of actual human contact. You know, the simple stuff that can make life so much better.
When you meet a friend, actually sit down and talk to them, look them in the eye, listen to what they say, laugh at their jokes (even if they're not funny), offer your shoulder if they need to cry, take the trouble to suss out how life is treating them and what they need from you - their friend.

When you walk down the street, nod and smile at those people you see every day but you never acknowledge. Maybe the next day, they may greet you with a shy "Good morning" and - who knows - before you know it, you may have made a new friend!

When you buy something from a shop or supermarket, look the cashier in the eye as he or she hands you your change and say "Thank you" - and mean it. That simple gesture costs you nothing, but it could make all the difference to their hum-drum day.

I like people, I really do. Though there are plenty I can happily live without, and plenty more I'm sure aren't crazy about me, I really like folk. In all their glory, with all their faults and failings, warts and all, it is our fellow people that give life the colour it needs. Personally, I don't dream in black-and-white, so I certainly don't want to live in monochrome.

That’s why I believe that it’s up to us, as users, to make social media work for us, and to apply an intelligent filter to avoid the dross that comes with the gift of instant connection with a shedload of people around the world.

We have a choice – to make Facebook serve our purposes, or to surrender ourselves to becoming its slave.

So, raise a glass to Facebook’s first decade and enjoy your ‘personal video’ marking its tenth birthday (we all enjoy a little ego-massage, don’t we?), but make sure you’re the one in control – at least of your own little corner of the Internet.

Is there anybody out there?

I'm no technophobe. I love technology. When it works, it's an absolute marvel: it helps me reach out and make contact with people all over the world; it lets me get things done quickly and easily; it enables me to keep up-to-date with my family in the UK; it allows me to rapidly correct my online mistakes (hopefully before anyone else notices them); it lets me deal with some of the more boring aspects of daily life at the touch of a button; and it has proved to be a valuable work tool and even a source of income.

I spend at least 8 hours a day at my PC, tapping away, getting my work done, chatting to colleagues around the world, bashing out ideas, smoothing out agreements and generally making my presence known from Houston to Tokyo (and many points in between). I have long passed that stage when the Internet scared me stupid and I can now html with the best of them (well, maybe not the best - I guess I can html with the average).

But it's no substitute for real life.

Nothing drives me further up the wall than meeting up with friends you haven't seen for ages, only to sit there sipping your coffee patiently as they risk tendon damage by tapping away at their mobile phone sending out endless badly-spelled and inane text messages to someone (anyone?) they'd apparently rather communicate with than me, even though I'm sitting right in front of them.

Or when my son meets up with pals he hasn't seen for weeks, only to spend the next 3 hours each staring at the screen of their PSPs or whatever the latest "must have" is.

Then there is the ubiquitous Blue Tooth ear appendage thingie. It seems that anybody that is anybody (OK, that makes me a nobody, but I can live with that) has to have this latest accessory that screams "Hey, look everybody! I've got a gizmo stuck on my ear 'cos I'm so busy and important. Next stop, brain implant."

And when someone who calls themselves my friend sends me an automatically-generated generic text message from their mobile phone instead of actually remembering it's my birthday and calling me to say Many Happy Returns, I'd much rather they didn't bother.

Technology is a tool, something we should use to enrich and ease our lives - not replace them. But we human beings are fatally flawed and we just don't to know when to stop, do we?

Thanks to the massive splurge of easily-accessible communications technology in the past couple of years, we've seem to have forgotten the joys of actual human contact.

You know, the simple stuff that can make life so much better. When you meet a friend, actually sit down and talk to them, look them in the eye, listen to what they say, laugh at their jokes (even if they're not funny), offer your shoulder if they need to cry, take the trouble to suss out how life is treating them and what they need from you - their friend.

And if you can't do all of that without sneaking a peek at your mobile, switch the damn thing off!

When you walk down the street, nod and smile at those people you see every day but you never acknowledge. Maybe the next day, they may greet you with a shy "Good morning" and - who knows - before you know it, you may have made a new friend!

When you buy something from a shop or supermarket, look the cashier in the eye as he or she hands you your change and say "thank you" - and mean it. That simple gesture costs you nothing, but it could make all the difference to their hum-drum day.

I like people, I really do. Though there are plenty I can happily live without, and plenty more I'm sure aren't crazy about me, I really like folk. In all their glory, with all their faults and failings, warts and all, it is our fellow people that give life the colour it needs. Personally, I don't dream in black-and-white, so I certainly don't want to live in monochrome.

And that's why I get so upset at everyday scenes of people sitting right next to each other but failing to make any meaningful contact thanks to the demands of their mobile phones, Blackberries or PSPs.

So, I have decided to start my own little campaign to get people back in touch with one another.

I was going to call it Touch: The Campaign for Human Contact but that didn't grab the imagination of my Other Half, so I am in the market for a better name. If any of you out there (is there anybody out there?) have any bright ideas, I'd love to hear from you.

And when all else fails - smile.

Hitch-hiking on the info highway

When was the last time that you actually bought a newspaper? At the risk of being branded a turncoat as a former print hack, I have to confess that it’s yonks since I actually shelled out real money for a paper.

My Other Half is another matter – at least at the weekends. Every Saturday and Sunday he nips out to the periptero (kiosk/news stand) and staggers back with something that represents an acre of Amazonian rain forest. According to my calculations, about 2% of that bulk is made up of news – and about one-fifth of that is something that either of us is likely to actually read. The rest is made up of freebie CDs, DVDs, books (without which no household is complete) and a huge pile of advertising bumph that will be stuck in the corner where it festers for a couple of months before I have one of my Whirling Dervish style cleaning sprees and chuck it in the Recycling bag.

It all brings home the simple fact that I never wanted to admit to when I was churning out copy in a newsroom all those years ago. Like so many others, newspapers and magazines are not in the business that we think they're in. They don't really exist to sell information and comment to readers (who can get a much better selection for free online anyway). No, they’re in the business of delivering an audience to their advertisers.

Let’s face it, we don’t want the vast majority of advertising that comes with our Sunday papers. The first thing most of us do when we’ve ripped open the cellophane wrapping is to shake the paper over the bin until the various offers, brochures, leaflets, Uncle Tom Cobbley and all dribble out. Then all that remains is to wade through the ads in the actual paper and all the stuff we’re not bothered about in order to reach that one article or column we don’t want to miss.

That’s why I've taken to surfing the net for my news these days. In fact, I've become a bit of an online info-junkie. It’s not just a matter of getting the absolute latest news at the click of a button (courtesy of the Beeb, CNN, Al Jazeera, CBS, ERT etc.). Nor is it the joy of getting all the background I can possibly digest thanks to Wikipedia, Ask.com and others. I can also check out the front pages and contents of those papers I no longer pay for. In addition to the online versions of The Independent (which I love for the sheer cussedness of its determinedly-different front page policy) and The Telegraph for its sometimes brilliant (though slightly fogey-ish) writing, I can also shamelessly check out The Sun or even The Daily Hell without jeopardising my carefully cultivated public image (ha!).

AND I can play Dr Who and go back in time to check out what they had to say a year ago.

The Internet is the ultimate democratisation of the information highway (as evidenced by the amount of crap and unreliable information it hosts), and if so inclined you can get a variety of viewpoints in order to hopefully form an intelligent opinion of your own (yeah, I know, wishful thinking).

It can also (partly) eliminate the irritation element of advertising in the Sunday papers. Though my In Box is swamped with Spam mails on a daily basis, all I need to do is hit the Delete button. Online the pop-up ads are quickly dealt in the same way, BUT discreet links give me the option of clicking for more information about that one thing I am actually interested in.

So, why do we keep on buying papers? Personally, apart from the pleasurable frustrations of the crossword, I think people buy them as props. Newspapers are part of our uniform, part of what declares to the world what we want them to think of us. For both the city gent with his FT tucked under his arm or the media type with their Grauniad, the paper they buy on the way to work say something about them. They help confirm our place in the world - and that makes us feel safe.

They’re also good for hiding behind on the train.

The same can't be said for the news sites you browse through. It's an intimate relationship between you and your screen and (hopefully) there's no-one looking over your shoulder forming an opinion about your IQ based on your dot-com of choice. Or are they?

Beware - in cyber-space, no-one can hear you scream.

Times, they are a-changin'

Not so very long ago, if you saw someone walking down the street talking to themselves there was a good chance that you were looking at the local loony. These days, they are more likely to be chatting away on their mobile phone.

In the relatively short space of time since I’ve been a working bod (OK, it's been a quarter of a century but it FEELS like just a couple of years) many things have changed almost beyond recognition.

When I started out as a trainee reporter on a South London local newspaper, I had to bash out my copy on an antique manual typewriter (1 original & 2 carbon copies) and the paper was still printed using hot metal technology.

I won’t deny that I was glad to see my old typewriter go the way of the dodo and be replaced by the far more forgiving computer keyboard and screen, but there was a strange glamour to the old printing process that I still miss.

Our Newsroom was above the print floor and there was an indefinable thrill in watching the Chief Sub and printer bent over scrutinising the 'stone' that would become the plate for each page. Next would come the unmistakable rumble as the massive presses started up for the Thursday afternoon print-run, accompanied by the distinctive smell of hot metal and printing ink.

Once those presses were running, the Newsroom would heave a collective sigh of relief, safe in the knowledge that another edition of Croydon’s finest had been 'put to bed'. Then, we'd submit our expense slips and head for the pub. Of course, there was always the chance of something big happening and us having to swing into action. But the cry of “Stop the presses!” was rarely heard (mainly due to the huge cost of stopping and starting the machines once they were on a roll).

The Newsrooms of today are very different to the one I walked into at the tender age of 18. Then, they were chaotic, cluttered, smoke-filled dens filled with scruffy excitable individuals who were deceptively organised (they had to be, to create order out of that chaos). Desks were littered with copy slips, expense claims forms, old notes slammed onto “spikes”, forgotten coffee cups and overflowing ashtrays. Sounds like hell, but I loved it.

These days, Newsrooms tend to be quiet, politically correct, clinical, air-conditioned havens peopled by clean-living, non-smoking (either by choice or enforcement) individuals who have probably never seen a manual typewriter. And the only sounds to break that ordered atmosphere are the gentle clicking of computer keyboards and the occasional chirrup of a mobile phone.

Thanks to the Internet, news is now instantaneous, so the focus of a weekly local rag has changed too. It’s not so much a matter now of getting the news to your readers, but offering the best promotions, inviting 'citizen journalists' to contribute to your column inches (filling space for free and allowing them to grind their own particular axes, sometimes at the cost of impartiality and decent writing) and attracting the most profitable advertising.

I am not going to pretend that I don’t get nostalgic for the 'old days', when the grimy gritty glamour of organised chaos, combined with uncompromising News Editors who insisted on the best possible quality of reporting and writing, produced something we were satisfied with every week – and occasionally something we were genuinely proud of.

However, times are a-changin’, as they must, and in many ways things are better now. We all have access to multiple sources of information, instantly, at the touch of a button. And if we are so inclined, we have the ammunition to judge and reach our own conclusions based on a variety of sources.

But let’s not throw out the baby with the bath-water.

The renegade tradition personified by the newspaper hacks that populated Newsrooms for much of the 20th century still has valuable lessons to teach us. That we should never simply swallow everything we are told. That we should not be overawed by authority. That we should always ask the key questions – what, when, how, where, and (most of all) why – and insist on straight answers. That it’s OK to break the mould and take a sideways look at things. That it's right to be outraged by injustice and to believe that things can be changed.

Looking even further back, the roots of that tradition go back to social observers and would-be reformers like Samuel Pepys, Charles Dickens, George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and George Orwell.

Isn’t that a tradition worth keeping up?

I think, therefore I Spam?

I’ve been thinking about just how smart machines are and how much they really know about me.

Judging by the Spam that magically appears in my In Box every day, the Great Cyber Brain out there KNOWS that I am:

• desperate for penile enhancement


• waiting for the right investment opportunity for the millions burning a hole in my pocket


• in need of prayers offered by obscure Evangelists


• seeking the companionship of a good woman called Ludmilla


• looking for a revolutionary weight loss plan that involves no diet or exercise


• in the market for cheap Viagra


• fluent in Russian and Japanese


• likely to give my bank account details to someone promising me a share in a clandestine fortune


• willing to believe that a miracle will happen if I forward a mail to 20 other people within the next 5 minutes


• haven’t seen the Dalai Lama’s guidelines for a happy life at least 400 times.

Strange thing is, they’re wrong – or at least mostly wrong. When I was at school, 1 out of 10 meant a resounding 'F'.

Conclusion? Spam aint smart - Spam is dumb. We’re the smart ones. We just tend to forget it at times.

Spam could be smart, but frankly for most of us, it can’t be bothered. No matter how much we obsess about Big Brother and the pervasive and invasive nature of the www (the only acronym I know that takes three times as long to say as the thing it abbreviates), most of us are not really that interesting.

Big Brother and his Internet Thought Police don’t really care if I put sugar or sweetener in my morning coffee. Nor does it give a monkey’s dooh-dah what colour I dye my hair. Sure, they can sell that fascinating information (for the record: either brown sugar, & red with strawberry blonde highlights) to stealth advertisers who will then bombard me with sugar substitutes and hair dye offers. But I can always ignore them or (as I regularly do) hit the Delete button.

There is no intelligence at work. Just a database. A list of information which users (and abusers) try to match to their own criteria to identify 'victims'. Nothing more. No thought. No real judgement. No opinion.

Despite the fact that South Korea is already drawing up legislation to protect robotic rights, it is you and me (and even that moron next door) that represent the most phenomenal piece of cerebral engineering imaginable. And that’s not likely to change for as long as we refuse to surrender into a supine, vegetative state.

We have the divine ability to be bloody-minded and unreasonable, even when we know it’s not in our interests - to literally rage against the machine.

Problem is, it’s much easier to just go with the flow. After a hard day’s work, followed by the weekly supermarket fight to the death and mental acrobatics trying to balance our budget, who has the energy to actually THINK rather than let the flood of infotainment wash over us as we sprawl on the sofa?

But that way leads to slavery, with the machines as our masters. So, let’s get bloody-minded, take control of our own thoughts and reclaim our mastery over those dumb machines that were created to be our servants.

Now, where did I put my whip?