I’ve tried to embrace technology. When DVDs hit I expelled videotape from my lexicon. I’ve blogged for years (computer willing). It was harder to embrace digital music over CDs (for lack of iPod), but I’m getting there. I waited until the socialnetworks grew up before I jumped in. Once scholarly articles were written about Facebook I signed up.
The complaints against Facebook seem to be that it’s self absorbed and mindless. Certainly anytime self absorbed people get ahold of anything they’ll turn it into one more way to turn inward. But what I find striking about it is that the quotidian commentary people provide are the sort of comments that the closest of people make.
Some look at Facebook as the “watering down” of friendship, but it is really the widening of friendship. Acquaintances become friends, people I’ve met become friends. Things I would share with my wife, the how was your day type comments, are shared with everybody. It isn’t inherently self-centered unless you think you wife telling you about the laundry mishap is self-centered.
I like that my friends are daily before me, like the Facebread was before the Lampstand in the Holy Place. Prayer is easier when those I don’t often see are brought to mind by a comment on the weather, what they ate for breakfast, what they did. They become more real to me, yes, the internet makes people more real.
So if you aren’t on Facebook it must be because you are rude or arrogant. Facebook is like a watered down church. You friend people, you share things, you treat them like family when maybe you hardly know them.