Why I Won't Be Friended

I turned 40 this year. I grew up in the dawn of the personal computer age, owned a Pong machine and an Atari 2600, used computers that printed on paper instead of a display monitor, and later cut my teeth on a Mac SE (and thinking my 20 megabyte hard drive was humongous). When I got a job and had to switch away from Apple, I was assigned a 386 processor and used internal network messaging clients before there was email. I sneered at the clunky nature of early Windows operating systems. I got my first glimpse of the web through Mosaic, and enjoyed the first few releases of Netscape before Explorer took over. Alta Vista was my favorite search engine. There, I have just digitally carbon dated myself.

The point is I am very comfortable with computers and modern technology. I never took a class or read a manual, and am self-taught in all the hardware and software that I use regularly. My VCR clock never blinked “12:00.” I’ve been an early adopter more than a few times. I’ve owned Digital Video Recorders since 2000, a few years before “Tivo” became a verb. My family even once owned a Betamax.

But I also have a healthy amount of Luddite inside me. I was the last Asian person on the planet to get a cell phone; I didn’t own one until about five years ago. My rationale was since everyone had one, if I needed to make a call, they were very easy to borrow. Today, I have a Blackberry, and yes, am now “one of them,” who is constantly peeking at it. People who knew me pre-mobile can hardly believe it. But even today I cling to what kept me from early cell phone adoption and wonder why they are so revered, with such crappy audio quality, spotty coverage and illogical interfaces. I love technology and gadgetry, but I cringe at the poor quality that is the current lowest common denominator of things like cell phones.

My father, on the other hand, like the parents of many of you reading this, does not pick up technology that well. When he first used computers, he programmed them with aperture cards. I try to remember this fact every time I have to re-explain to him how to execute copy-and-paste, and God forbid if he has to do it from between two different applications. Even though he was exposed to early computing, he has never bridged the gap into the modern day.

Conversely, I have rarely encountered a new technology that I feel is beyond me. Even when it’s something brand new to me (like when I got a cell phone), I usually have no problem figuring out how to use it. Given enough time for trial and error, I feel I can learn how to operate just about anything technological. Having witnessed my parents struggle with what I consider to be the simplest of computing tasks (e.g., double-clicking or even just searching Google), I have often wondered at what point in my life will I encounter my own equivalent of the blinking VCR clock, something whose operation I just can not grasp.

Now I think I’ve found the answer to that question and it just might be Facebook. Not Facebook specifically, but the whole social networking phenomena. I was perhaps looking in the wrong place—instead of a particular technology’s rote functions escaping me, it is perhaps the context and scenario of use that I find elusive. It’s not that I don’t understand how Facebook (and the other “social networking” sites) works and how people use it, I just don’t get the “why.” While I recognize the standard generation gap with youth’s willingness to openly share the intimate minutia of their lives, one surprising statistic is that the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is 35 to 54 year olds.

By now you are maybe wondering how this is relevant to the business of product development. The biggest problem facing companies today is keeping markets engaged and proactively addressing the all-too-temporary nature of profitability. Companies are today flocking to social media outlets in an attempt to capture relevancy in our increasingly ambivalent world. Facebook integration has suddenly appeared on the requirements lists of business cases for products in just about every category.

This is very similar to when websites were considered the “shiny new toy” and must-have gadget for all companies. If anything, people are more likely to embrace social media more willingly this time around, as those who resisted creating websites in the 1990s as a waste of time fear repeating such curmudgeonly foolishness. Thus, this go around with Facebook has the feel of overcompensation for past Internet shyness. Most of these new sites also have a similarly unrefined presentation that reminds me of the nascent stylings of the early World Wide Web.

While I am pretty far from a grumpy old man longing for the simpler times, my conundrum is in facing my potential technological mortality by rejecting the Facebook phenomenon. “It will never last,” I tell myself, or perhaps I am just wishfully thinking that my negative feelings towards broadcasting my every latest thought into the stratosphere and having an artificially extended community of digital friends are justified. I can only think that the unbearable signal-to-noise ratio that social media piles onto the already-crowded space of email, spam, RSS, etc. is unsustainable. Perhaps all this digital self-exposure is a precursor to the group consciousness that some believe we will evolve to, similar to quantum communication, where subatomic particles seem to be “aware” of other particles that exist light years away and with no physical connection. If that’s the case, the growing pains are painful indeed.

Lest anyone think my complaints are masking feeble geek skills, here’s what this entire column would be like if I had written it for Twitter:

Facebook. I don’t get it. What’s the big deal? Who has time for all this? If you’re reading this, get a life!

Hey, who says I can’t adapt? Now I just need to find a “smiley” that says “luddite.”