Webupon

I vividly remember the first time I ever heard about facebook. I was having coffee with a friend in a busy London coffee shop when she casually mentioned to me that she wanted to go online and check her “wall”. Soon she lapsed into an enthusiastic discussion of how she and her friends were having a “poke war” to see who could “poke” back the most without getting tired. She also kept mentioning wall posts and how reading them was a wonderful way of knowing the latest updates in people’s lives. I stared back in bewildered confusion, completely oblivious to all these strange foreign terms she was bombarding me with! It all sounded so alien and like complete gibberish to me. I wondered how in the world could you POKE someone ONLINE, and how in the world could you WRITE on a WALL!!!! I did not understand the concept nor did I get what all the fuss was about. Why people were so excited about something as common as a personal profile with a measly friend list attached to it was beyond me! What was the big deal?

Little did I know that soon, I would become a devoted facebook junkie myself. Soon afterwards, I created a facebook profile and I never looked back. I was caught up in a whirlwind of “pokes”, personal messages, “applications” and “wall” posts. Such terms which sounded so peculiar to me before became completely normal and standardized.

Today, it’s almost bizarre to find an avid internet user who has never heard of facebook. Facebook profiles are even created by politicians who use them to increase followers and boost their popularity! Celebrities use them to widen their fan base. Even teachers use them to connect with their students. Facebook users have quickly created their own private world, complete with their own slang terminology, which might sound ridiculous outside the scope of this website.

Would you believe that 4 short years ago facebook did not exist? It started in 2004, as a University project by a 20 year old Harvard sophomore student, which later on expanded to become open to the public! Soon, facebook fever started sweeping the world, moving outside the United States onto international grounds and spreading. Today, one hundred and ten million active people from hundreds of countries around the world use facebook daily, as a main means of interaction and communication.

Which brings us to the essential question; what does this level of popularity indicate? Are there any negative sides to the world being so absorbed in a technological phenomenon? Let’s face reality, it would certainly be much easier and hassle-free to go on facebook and send mass personal messages or multiple wall posts, rather than go through the hassle of picking up the phone and going through a long list of calls. You might as well skip through the polite chitchat, hop through the obligatory small talk, jump over the formal hellos and goodbyes and click on straight to the point, right?

For instance, if you were to invite a group of friend over for a gathering, you could send 20 personal messages with one click that read “we are throwing a surprise birthday party for Lana at my place Tuesday at 8″. Or simply send a message that says “I need to borrow your notes tomorrow” instead of going through the whole process of actually calling and asking.

I like to think of it as an infinite yet limited sea of interaction. Infinite in the sense that there are no limits to the number of people you can contact with a few simple clicks. Endless possibilities in the number of people you might reestablish lost ties with in this sea of millions. No boundaries in the sense that an hour a day spent on facebook could enable you catch up with 15 or 20 friends, in a way that a telephone never could.

Yet, despite all these endless possibilities, being on facebook keeps us limited in ways beyond our imagination. We are becoming limited in the sense that we are losing the principles of basic human contact such as favoring typed words over the art of conversations. We are becoming limited, in the way that we might forget the joy of simple pleasures like going over to a newlywed’s house for coffee to see her wedding and honeymoon picture albums. Why bother when you find her picture album posted on facebook a few days later. We are confined in the sense that we are keeping in contact with tens of hundreds of friends, yet we rarely hear their voices or see their faces…

Though we are in touch, we are a thousand miles apart. It was disheartening to me to realize that I am in “constant contact” with a friend whom I have not seen for almost two years! It is daunting for me to think that simple acts like meaningless small talks of catching up or huge picture albums might become rare occasions in the future. We, as human beings, are bound within the confines of our own genius creations. So advanced are we, that we are destroying the bridges we have spent years building.

Do not get me wrong! Joyful I am over the friendships facebook has helped me rekindle. Friendships that were long lost with friends I had not spoken to in years. Grateful I am for this wonderful new world that opened doors for me to go so far and accomplish so much from the comfort of my room! Amazed I am by how far we have come, that I may contact a friend in Australia without spending a single penny! It is a day and age we have only dreamed of, and which has materialized before our very eyes.

Yet I am fearful that we might proceed in this wonderful new world and lose sight of each other. I am fearful for our children who may never learn the simple pleasures of life outside the digital box, and may never see anything wrong with that!

I would like my children to learn the direct art of communication in every way possible. I would not want them to miss out on a single moment I have been through. Nor would I want to see them spending their days in front of a screen, experiencing life through a window. I would like to send them out to the world to fully experience every single moment.

In the end, the moments that have struck me and stayed with me the most are not the moments I have spent online. They are moments I have spent outside laughing, crying, getting to know people, making memories and interacting with the world.

I would still like to receive a beautifully embroidered hand written birthday card every once in a while, that I can save as a keepsake, instead of a digitalized message. I would like to meet a friend I have not seen in a year for coffee and biscuits and an update on both of our lives, instead of sending her a message and telling her where I stand in life.

There is a thin fine line between advancing forward from technology and allowing it to take over. Perhaps, the answer is to strike a perfect balance between technology and tradition, taking the best of both worlds. Never letting one rule over the other, or rule over our lives.

I can promise you one thing; when I get married, you will not find my wedding album on facebook. You will have to come over for a hot pot of coffee, a sweet plate of cookies and some warm heartfelt conversation. I would love to hear and feel your “photo comments” about my special day, instead of reading your lovely words off my screen. The sound of your voice might stay with me and ring through my ears for years to come, whenever I flip through those pictures. I would not trade that for anything in the world!

Written by: Dina Nowilati

November 2, 2008