At this point there’s likely 2 million facebook users joined in an uprising against the changes facebook made to the live feed. Posted my own comment there last night – “facebook ignored the golden rule: thou shalt always be user-friendly.” Every blink of my eyes saw a half a dozen more comments coming in rapid fire. Clearly there was mutiny in our midst.
I suddenly had a flashback of reading Jerry Mander’s In the Absence of the Sacred, The Failure of Technology and the Survival of the Indian Nations, in the early 90s.
Mander is an anti-technology activist (also wrote Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television), and while I certainly don’t agree with his premise that the technological evolution has little or no value, I do agree with his radical premise that not all new technology is necessarily “good” technology, or technology that will serve us. And yet, most of us assume that all new technology is needed and can’t come soon enough.
The overwhelming theme of all the “I hate the new live feed” postings is: “change it back.”
The opportunity available to all of us in the social media playing field is nothing less than staggering. Most importantly from my perspective, it has fundamentally changed the way we organize, agitate and participate in our political process. Among social media’s greatest promise is the notion of an equal playing field and community identity. Yet in the end, we see that even in the wide and egalitarian space of facebook, we are beholden to decisions made by a few that failed to adhere to basic communication principles around inclusion and information-sharing.
Change it back.
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