Millions worldwide embark on a daily
pilgrimage to a single space residing in the digital world -- and that place
belongs to Mark Zuckerberg.
Recently, a friend of mine had mixed up
Zuckerberg with "Zukerhut" [which is German for Sugarloaf Mountain,
Brazil]. While I had tried to imagine how the world's famous cliff in Rio de
Janerio could turn into the world's largest, skyward-pointing "Like"
Thumb, another imagery would come to mind -- the iconic 38-metre high statue of
Christ the Redeemer spreading out His arms over the city.
And isn't Mark Zuckerberg somewhat like a
new messiah who feeds the hungry with Communication? After all, the man has
proselytised appropriately 800 million people withing eight years. He has
brought them together and persuaded them all to say "Like". And to
present one of the largest sacrificial offering that humans could offer: Time.
The average digital citizen of the world spends just under 16 hours on Facebook
daily, with an estimated overall of more than ten billion seconds per month.
"What are your religious beliefs?"
But Zuckerberg is, perhaps ironically,
listed in Wikipedia's "List of Atheists" under the business category.
His Facebook status is also quoted here - "Religious Views: atheist".
Mark Zuckerberg is up there among other prominent atheists such as English
typesetter John Baskerville, after which whom a famous font is named after;
American pornography publisher Larry Flynt (of "Hustler" fame); or British
inventor Sir Clive Sinclair, who had launched one of the first home computers
in the eighties, the Sinclair ZX-81.
If one would search Google for "Mark
Zuckerberg, Religion", one will first find a remarkable and equally
puzzling search hit: "The assumption for Mark Zuckerberg's religion is
atheism''. Google does not put up an assumption for any other person; not the
Dalai nor even Pope Benedict XVI. That particular search item there points
politely to the respective Wikipedia entry. Is Google now also becoming a speculation
machine and is Mark Zuckerberg their first guinea pig from a competitive side?
Incidentally, the Pope is also on Facebook (with "9,866 Likes"). One,
however, simply cannot "Poke" him.
"The planetary confessional box"
Facebook, meanwhile, is firmly intertwined
in the social web of the world. Almost every second American on the street has
a Facebook account (but 70% of Facebook users live outside of the U.S). More
than 12.3 million Malaysians use Facebook, on smartphones or computers or
tablets that serve as a device of worship. "The Facebook era has begun and
Mark Zuckerberg is the person who has brought us here," wrote TIME
Magazine in December 2010, when Zuckerberg was announced as the "Person of
the year". In this leading article, a reporter describes one of the few
conference rooms in the Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto as "an
open-plan office completely visible through three sides of glass walls".
This "No Privacy, Full
Visibility" room reflects much of a Facebook account, and it's a radical
openness it has embraced. It's like a confessional box in a Catholic church,
which comes with its own privacy settings and deliberately limited settings
options -- at least according to the will of its non-religious founder,
Zuckerberg.
That an atheist prompted hundreds of
millions of people to not only openly confess everything, but also the fact
that such a behavior could purely and simply become a conventional form of
communication, is rather astounding. In January 2010, Zuckerberg announced the
end of your own private sphere, that it was a thing of the past. It has a value
that doesn't interest anyone now. In the centre of Facebook, this confessionary
is already a part of its architecture. There are no "cubicles"
reminiscent of the low-partitions in open-plan offices in America, which are
supposed to provide a semblance of privacy to its workers. Here, in the
Facebook headquarters, there are almost no walls and no cubicles: only an open
prairie made of office furniture. Even Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and visionary
of the service, does not have his own office.
Pour yourself to the world
The walls surrounding us are becoming more
and more translucent and porous through the network as if the perforated web
that represents a network would now also be transferred to the remaining parts
of the world. What takes place in the network meanwhile often feels like
confession without a sin: everyone talks, everything opens up. Facebook is, in
this case, a pioneer and a mass movement in one. The main pleasure in social media
is to pour yourself out in the world and to be drunk in by thirsty, considerate
eyes.
Our culture is rooted in the high value
which we attach to the individual. Privacy is the humus on which this value
thrives. Now our society appears to be grasped by a boundless desire in the
absence of secrecy. As a means of the world explanation, the computer and
communication technology now tends towards becoming a religion - like every
ideology imparting the universal meanings and demanding the absolute
acculturation. Following the correct commands is gentled through the concept of
computerence.
Like every other large company, Facebook
also has its own philosophy and Commandments. Among other things, the Facebook
developers claim to make the world more open and transparent with their work,
thus encouraging mutual understanding and to enable individual persons to have
control when exchanging information. You can read through the ten Facebook bids
under facebook.com/principles. php -- and then decide for yourself as to whether
Facebook sticks to them.
Large churches are decadent
A Hollywood scriptwriter had once said:
"what we give the people is the Christian message - that we should all be
honest, should love each other and should fight for the weak." Production
of powerful myths has shifted from the religious to the economic scope. Large
churches are regarded by many as decadent, mainly by the younger people. The
social change of last year and the decade has brought about a radical change of
values.
With virtualisation, the
"informatisation" of the world actually treads an ethereal, spiritual
component. The computer itself is becoming a multimedia totem. Like a family
altar, it sits on the desk of the world and radiates its shamanic lure.
Mark Zuckerberg has a clear vision of where
he wants to go with his worldwide contact church. He was in his early twenties
when he turned down a takeover bid from Yahoo! of over one USD 1 billion
dollars - against the opposition of his investors. Today the stock market analysts
assess Facebook at between USD70 and 100 billion dollars. What had begun before
a couple of years as a hobby in the form of software has now become something
in the entire world which changed the reality of people and the way in which
they organise their relations. 7,000 years ago, the first civilizations existed
on the banks of Nile and Euphrates and Tigris in the early days of written
history. Similarly, the social-media people establish today on the bank of a
large stream: on the bank of the live stream. We live our life now partly and
in increasing measures through a privately operated network, which has already
made its owner a multibillionaire, at least on paper.
Facebook and the Tower of Babel
Cultural pessimists see the Facebook-line
as something comprising of media fragments, links and text bits - the stream -a
source of increasing loss of orientation and sensuous impoverishment, the
product of a distraught society, which has lost that deep-rooted, collaborative
experience which was endowed till now by spirituality, religion and philosophy.
What remains is a consumer society where "whoever dies with most toys,
wins" (Neil Postman, US American media researcher). But times change and
soon its network is also a place of immortality for posts and images. Eternal
living with Facebook - well, in that case, there should be "undead"
next to Status. Could be in such a way that the one who dies with the most
friends and followers, wins. If the digital 'I' then ever dies. After all the
network is also a place of immortality for posts and images. Eternal living
with Facebook - well, in that case, there should be "undead" next to
Status.
Interestingly there are mainly clergymen
for whom Facebook appears to represent the modernized model of a church.
"If Mark Zuckerberg can create Facebook for his own glory, what can we
create as a church to the glory of God?", asks, for instance, Steven
Furtick, his sign chief pastor of the Elevation Church in the US federal state
of New Jersey. "The people have begun the Tower of Babel for their own
glory. Zuckerberg makes a name for himself. But the tower was not perfect and
the names of those who built it have been forgotten."
Then the all clear signal in January 2011,
at least for the Roman Catholic faction: the Pope stated social networks such
as Facebook as places offering the Christian "great opportunities of
association." It should however not take the place of direct human
meetings.
Stronger through weak bonds
Sociologists at the Michigan State
University have incidentally observed that social networks can have a
surprisingly positive effect on the human psyche. Users who were unsatisfied
with their life or who suffered from lack of self-confidence and then began to
frequent networks such as Facebook intensively could set up a social energy
reserve. It is a form of human relations which psychologists describe as
"weak bond". A person has weak bonds with schoolmates or to party
acquaintances for instance. They are very important because they open new
perspectives and opportunities for a person and can also give new impulses
which one would not obtain any longer from close friends or family members -
because one already knows them very well.
Facebook brings people together,
although not always to do good - like at this "Facebook party" in
Hamburg.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (L) speaks to
Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda (R) in front of a monitor displaying a
facebook page of Prime Minister's Office of Japan in Tokyo on March 29, 2012.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (L) speaks
to Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda (R)
