To the Editor:
Robin Dunbar claims that social networking sites allow us to replicate the “old rural communities where everyone knew everyone else.” But we live under the constraints of Facebook’s rules and limits, more a transparent cage than a house.
In this village there are thousands of shadows stalking us among our huts and peering through the windows—the hungry ghosts of investors and advertisers searching for new ways to commercialize our interests, personalities and friendships.
This is not a village; it’s a business. We are not residents, but employees bound to labor ignorantly for the network’s bottom line.
Anyone who believes that Facebook operates out of revolutionary devotion to human advancement is free to stalk the electronic village shouting its name, but he also risks becoming that village’s idiot.
Sean Brander
Santa Fe, N.M., Dec. 27, 2010
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 