Blog and Facebook

A hiatus. I have experienced big and continuing problems with logging in to my own blog. I’m not confident that it is sorted out for good. I might have to go elsewhere – if it’s worth continuing at all. I have reservations about the self-indulgence of the exercise.

I am withdrawing from Facebook. Their decision to reset everyone’s default email address to @Facebook is unethical. They did not ask. They did not inform. No doubt the some obscure clause in the terms and conditions let’s them do this. It’s clearly done for their own self interest.

The pattern is familiar. A company starts with enthusiasm and even idealism. In this phase it is necessarily customer-orientated. Over a certain critical size – probably a combination of staff size with attendant management structures and sheer financial mass – stock corporate behaviour kicks in. The collective interest of the corporation, as defined by one or a few dictatorial  managers and powerful investors, takes over as the end in view. This kind of corporate arrogance is all of a piece with Facebook’s lying at the time of the stock market flotation. The one consolation is that in this world of fast moving technological fads, the existing dinosaurs, with their ponderous lack of agility, will be wiped out by the next impact of a meteorite strike from a nerd in a bedroom. Where is My Space? Ingested by NewsCorp (ugh!) and then sold on. I give Facebook 12 years, Google 20. Maybe that’s too long. I have been to Google’s headquarters and seen the bureaucratic ossification close up. It is not a pretty sight, though they try to pretend it’s not happening with open-knecked shorts, knackered jeans and California-speak.