We Are Borg, Resistance Is Futile!

This past weekend I had the opportunity to check out the Facebook website.

I did this only because in checking the weblogs for truwinnipeg.org, it reported that most of the accesses to our site were via Facebook, rather than Google, or MSN Search, etc...

So after getting curious about this created my own Facebook ID. The difference in creating an on this site as compared to others is that you are highly encouraged to use your real name.

There are online communities similar to those on the regular web, except to view them, you MUST have a Facebook ID.

I know a few people on there locally, and of course I typed in 'Winnipeg Transit' to find groups related to that, and I also became official friends with other TRU Winnipeggers, and a politician.

What bothers me about Facebook is that it is like peering into someone else's private life. For example, I have a friend outside of Winnipeg who used to live here. I know that he has 3 or 4 kids. I can view photos of their Christmas together. I can also view photos of another friend, this one who does live in the city. And his kid is a bit on the obese side, for someone his age, yet I have had not met been in the presence of this person yet.

One other friend that I know allows Facebook to publish the latest songs and YouTube videos that he has watched.

We are quickly becoming a surveillance society, with Facebook, other online communities, and of course surveillance cameras on buses, and on street corners, and inside businesses and civic institutions like the public library.

Facebook to me, could be used for evil purposes. It could conceivably create a community against a person, and unless that person were a member of a site like Facebook, they would not have a clue what is being said about them.

I see this being used, in worse times that we live in now, as a sort Orwellian "eye", where there is considerable peer pressure to remain part of "the collective", like The Borg of Star Trek fame.