everybody is looking for fame - with or without Facebook

everybody is looking for fame; to have their fifteen minutes of notoriety, maybe on facebook

     

                                                                                           Roberto Benigni, Italian director

Facebook is a phenomena of strong impact. Up until today there are 850 millions members and its band-with is increasing with 10 million of users per month.

As I earlier stated I have started annabook as a healthy alternative to Facebook. Though I admit the many positive sides a global platform such as facebook have, I feel the negative aspects are far more damaging to the individual as well as to the world as a whole. I have seen many dangerous signs from the continuing development of Facebook, but no real resistance to this movement to be found. I am not trying to convince anyone to stop using Facebook. I just think that many individuals are not really reflecting upon how they use Internet, and the long-term effects their habits might have. I believe more people need to be aware of the cyber-world they are merged in before they click "agree".

Let me start with some positive aspects regarding Facebook. We have all seen how much power such a platform had during the spring revolutions in the arabic world. It might not have been facebook and other social networks that started the revolution, but it can be stated that these worked as a way to connect thousands and thousands of individuals to stand up against their leaders. Such a massive demonstration, especially in strongly controlled dictatorships, could otherwise have been hard to realize.

Many also like to show on the way these social networks can be a way to democratize the world. Through sharing, and especially when sharing without paying for it, we can get together and change things. If we are enough people, we can make things come true.

An example of how lots of people together changed the world was "the invisible children". An American was filming in Uganda when he discovered how the rebels kidnapped thousands and thousands of children and turned them into child warriors. Since the US government would not do anything to stop it, he started an organization, which grew and grew and today has thousands of members. The organization even managed, through pressure, have Obama send a small troupe of soldiers to protect the children in Uganda. And all this was made thanks to a huge amount of people getting together, through various platforms or social networks.

A third positive example of how facebook can be a good thing is for connecting with people which might otherwise not be having contact with anyone. Lonely people or elderly which do not have a lot of social contact, can find such on websides such as facebook. But here again, I am sceptical because of the real quality of such connection. Is not the lonely person looking for friends on Facebook, not only making illusionary friends? is not a real friend someone you should meet and have a direct relation with? Facebook might be a great way for some people to exhibit what they do in their lives, and just as Benigni says, it might feel like they are standing in the spotlight. But are they really being paid attention to, or is it just an imagination developed in a virtual world?

I will willingly agree, that if a platform is used in these ways they are positive. But as it turns out these are only the good sides of it. The darker sides are often sides many people do not know about, or are too lazy to really care about. Or they know about the negative sides but continue using the platform anyway for its good sides. Any way, it is important that each and every one of us open our eyes for what social networks are doing to us. And here is some of it.

During the year 2012, the fight between the giant four of Internet has intensified, according to Swedish Newspaper DN. Each and every one of these would like to rule the world: the e-commerce giant Amazon, the social network Facebook, the search engine Google and Apple. So why is it not until now that these globalized companies have culminated? Because before they were doing business in different branches.  The key to expansion today for these companies is to find ways to connect our social lives with  our consumption, and try doing this with their own hardware. Their strategy is to merge culture, media, newspaper, music and products so that all comes in on the same arena.

When it comes to Tv entertainment Google/Youtube and Amazon not only act as distributors, but also as producers, with their own channels and program development. The key word is to control the whole experience. For both national TV-companies as well as Internet companies, the digitalization brings possibilities of mapping viewers preferences. In other words, the television is watching us, just much as we are watching it.

During these last months, a couple of news have proven that the four Internet giants are moving their positions forward against each other - and the users! During the launching of its new policy, Google stated its right to store our personal web history for eternity - in order to produce personalized advertising!

During the mapping of our lives, the Internet companies do need our formal agreement. What they do therefore is to make sure that we, the users, register. The giants' collection of data is so enormous. Such an amount of data has never previously been seen during history. The global giants have found a the world's largest and best sellers - our friends!

Social commerce, the so called s-commerce, will lift our willingness to consume to new levels. Generally people have developed a scepsis against sellers, advertising and other one-direction publicity. Of our friends, on the other hand, we still have faith. Therefore our shopping habits will be merged with our social interaction. Next month Facebook will be introduced to the stock market with an extremely high evaluation. The reason is that Facebook is the world's biggest and most natural junction

 - family wise, locally, and globally - with an outspoken intention of a meeting spot for consumption.

The strategy of the giant four is no longer to build its business around one unique branch. You do not earn money on selling some few products, but rather on the knowledge of when, what and how you manage to sell to people. These companies want to know, and build their business-models according to, people's psychology and behavior.

The stories we buy are being adapted to a market need - but the opposite way will also be used: marketing will be adapted to the stories we are ready to hear. A Swedish marketing-strategist working for facebook Ninni Lindertz said that instead of one-way messages to consumers, facebook's advertising will be composed of an interactive "storytelling", where the offers have a direct correlation to our lives. If you are planning to have an Italian dinner, an ad for an Italian wine, that a friend have recommended earlier, might pop up.

The giant are developing more and more ways to get into people's brains, passing by their social relations. What are people thinking of? What do they want to pay for? What do people want in one hour?

In this movement, Amazon, Apple, Googl and Facebook, will dominate in the next coming years. Other such "social" companies are for example Tumblr, Pinterest and Twitter. These are companies which, just like the giant four, are based on human knowledge and social behavior, rather than technical competence.

This struggle has led to a repeated intrusions in our private spheres and trading of people's choices in a legal grey zone. A couple of weeks ago, it was discovered that Twitter , through the company Datasift, had offered all the twitter history (including information of the user's location) during the last two month to external companies. It was recently detected that Google and Apple use cookies and apps to spy on its users. In one case with iPhone, Apple had distributed the access to users private address-books  and photos.

Even if the mapping of our behavior has come a long way, the control of our thoughts are only just in the beginning. New methods for measuring are always developing. Apple has taken patent of an interface for reading of our eye movement. The company Senseye proclaims it next year will have a program ready for telephones that can register how we react on different pages and read.

The US has also developed a software that is capable of screening eye movements and the change of size of the pupil. This way the program can detect and avoid criminal actions before they are committed. 

What is stunning to me is not the huge amount of treading by these four giant. What is surprising to me is that no one appears to be protesting against this. Neither are parties or organization working for integrity moving a finger.

No matter which will be the players on the market in ten years, the monitoring of the worlds population is built on participation, on a freewill basis. The giant four therefore need to take care about their reputation as a nice friendly company with compelling visions. This is getting harder as controlling ambitions increase. What will be decisive for success will be the fact that in the end these companies deliver convenience. Life becomes more comfortable with the integration of our needs.

Today we can only guess what the commercializing and mapping do to our social relations and how it affects our relationship to the net giants. However, not much fantasy or cynism are needed to see the risk for a decisive next step will be that the market players and the states - of course with a nobel motive - unite their data. This way they can study our behavior, read our thoughts, deliver us products, drain our purse and intervene before we commit false actions.

All we need to do is that one and only click "I agree".

music can cure your heart

There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in
                                                Leonard Cohen, master in arts
           

In my last post I was writing about how facebook is a world which makes me feel disconnected to the essence of life and the surrounding universe. I wrote that on the other hand there are many things which make me feel connected, amongst them are animals, traveling, passions, people etc. 
I do not know how I could forget one of the most amazing of them all: MUSIC!
Music has like no other managed to open my heart to the world in a unique way. On certain occasions, only music has the power to penetrate my heart and soul and leaves me without breath. 

Here I am going to tell you one of my stories about music, though there are many more to be told. 
I once went to a small concert in one of the old quarters of Beijing, in the old town, the hutongs. The concert was held in an old style indoor patio, very colorful and cozy. The ambient was warm and friendly.
Though everything seemed like the perfect setting I was not feeling well at the time. I was feeling blue, lonely and isolated from the world. I was feeling lost.

As the music started and the three musicians set down, playing exotic oriental instruments, something happened. Just as the main musician started to stamp his feet where he had attached some bells, and played on the strange looking guitar, some of my inner strings started to move as well. It was as if the vibration from the instruments was affecting my body, which also started to vibrate.
Then, when the arabic musician started to sing a song from a forgotten era, it was as if I was traveling back in time, thousands of years. The music took me on a trip in time and space. It was vibrating and moving.

At one time he played a song which was rather sad and I cried one tear. Then again, he played a happy song and I smiled with my whole face. He also let the audience participate in his music by repeating the mystical words he was singing, and then moving our shoulders they way he did. As time went by, my whole body and soul was merged in this oriental vibration of sounds. My head was not longer ruling over my body, my soul was transfered into this amazing rhytm. I felt like dancing although I was sitting down.

After the concert I walked over to the oriental musician to ask if he was going to hold any more concerts. First thing he did when I approached him, he hugged me. It was a huge, warm hug, and long.
I told him it was an amazing concert and that his music made me cry. He told me that if his music made me cry, then that was the best effect he could have wished for. Cause, if people laughed or cried, then his music had reached each and every one's heart. 

Then he told me something I will never forget. He said he saw me when he walked into the patio. He felt my heart was cold like a stone. Then after the music started he had seen me moving, and my face smiling. He felt my heart was open at the end. His music had turned my heart warm again. The effect of the music was healing my heart. 
When he said these things, I was chocked. I had never noticed him looking my way during the concert, and I never thought anyone actually could feel what I felt. He could connect to my heart, in some subtle way. That to me was something new.

After these words of wisdom, we sat down and spoke for a while. He told me I should start doing some tai chi. Which I already did at that moment. It turned out we had some more things in common. He was born in Lebanon, but spent most of his life living abroad. France is where he resides. He speaks six or seven languages, I cannot quite recall. But maybe the language he knows the best, is music. Cause music can actually be the most powerful, unspoken language people have ever known. It is an unspoken language between the hearts. No other language is needed if you have music. It can fill your soul and body with love. It can cure your heart. His name is Abaji.

spiders jumping off before the train is tracking out

People have contacted me since my first post, asking to add more material on this topic.

Though I rather like to tell happy stories with a happy ending, I felt the need to explain myself a little bit deeper.

One of the reasons why I came to the point of opening a blog, was to be a non-convential, counter-flowing alternative to facebook. I see the route facebook is taking during the last period of time, and I feel it is quite worrying.

I believe Facebook is like a train tracking out. It has already started but will do so more and more. Some people have started to raise their eyebrows already, or cancelled their accounts. Some rarely access it. But most of my friends still have a heavy use of this social network.

One of the mayor factors to why I feel facebook is not a forum for well-being is that there are no direct indicator to be found how to live a better life, or none of the content seems to be created to improve peoples lives. It rather appears as an easy way to lose time, a distractor which sneaks into your mind and soul in an addictive kind of way.

It seems networking on the internet is a way of people feeling lonely believing they are connected to the world while they are on facebook, while in reality, they are only in a virtual space of immaginary connections. A real connection, in my point of view, is something you can only get in the real world. From people, animals or nature. Feeling connected has to do with your senses, your heart and spirit. Being on facebook looking at peoples posts, chatting with a friend or checking comments, you are mostly only using your brain.

In addition, it also appears to be a fabolous way of exhibiting yourself, to look for egoistic strive and create a immaginary feeling of being popular. People, who no one really cares for, might think they are being watched 24 hours. And this creates an immaginery self-esteem, which in reality has no grounding.

The backside of this kind of self-fulfillment is what happens when topics is talking about a person, and the consequences of the comments shows that that persons becomes a victim of a bully. This is probably not the aim of facebook, but this is one of the ways the train is tracking out.

Another way is the many methods the owners of this social networks can use the data of information they find from their members. This data they sell or eploit in some other way. Marketing and advertising are intrisicly linked with facebook.

If you have pictures on facebook then that is the image of yourself exposed to the rest of the world. Anyone can display a picture of you on their page and than that photo will be a part of your image, whether you like it or not, unless that person will not agree to delete the picture.

In addition to this fear, anxiousness of someone writing news about someone else or having a party
might cause severe problems in some, not being able to control the full outcome of events happening on the platform. Some friends of mine actually had to seeks professional help, and they were told
to quit using facebook for a long period of time.

 What is brand new to facebook is the program they developed together with Dutch airline, KLM. Due, or thanks to, this program anyone flying KLM Amsterdam-New York or San Francisco-San Paolo can, through their facebook account, chose which unknown passenger they wish sit next to, just picking this person through a social network.

Yesterday I read that American college students are not partying anymore when on their Spring break on a paradise beach, whether in Mexico or in Florida. The reason why they do not dare to drink, not even a beer, is because they are afraid of getting drunk, lose control and end up on a picture on facebook or youtube. And since they soon are going to graduate and look for a job, they are really
keen to have a "clean" image. This is how sad the world looks like today, due to facebook.

My questions are: where are we going to end up? If the facebook-train is already tracking out, then what miserable consequences are going to come? If we do not let destiny decide for us anymore, then what will the world look like in the future? Shall social networks be ruling our future lives?

I hope the story of facebook will have a happy ending, but I am afraid it is going to be a very winding road before we get there.

could "vintage men" change the world?

The other day something very nice, unusual happened. I relived old memories from a world, which appears far from the world we live in today. Today's world made of individual strive and self-fulfillment.

It seems to me our world is full of illusions and unsatisfied desires. In a globe of social networks, online newspapers, instant messaging, blogs etc. a great share of our reality is lived through a digital world. I recently came back from a long stay in Mexico. While I was there, absorbed in amazing nature, surrounded by simple people living a traditional life, It appeared to me how well I was doing without being connected to cyber-space. I was actually happy that my email was attacked by a virus, because I was not able, even though I sometimes would have wanted, to access my mail box. Just as a drug abuser is not able to obtain a drug. When you know you are doing better off without, but still feel that need of something. And during my trip, I was wondering what kind of need I am satisfying when I am online? Which desires do I try to fill going on facebook looking at what other people are doing, what new posts they put, or new people that added me? What kind of fulfillment am I replacing by accessing a virtual world?

I felt compelled to dig deeper into my mind, and after a long time without even touching the Internet, and through meditation, I finally found my answers. I felt none of my desires or needs are fulfilled through internet. At the contrary, when I was disconnected to the world, my inner self was in harmony. The massive amount of information that attack me every time I turn on the computer, appear to create some kind of chaos, or disorder in my mind. So my conclusion was to try to decrease my use of internet, and especially social networks, such as facebook.
I feel facebook creates a virtual reality which soon becomes a spiderweb. It is easy to access it and like it in the beginning, it is like entering an entirely new world, but it is very easy to get stuck in it. It is easy to get addicted to it. A friend of mine even had to search for professional psychological help, where she was advised to not touch facebook for half a year. This is an example of how ultimately, too much cyber use can lead to psychological damage, or at least a temporary state of unbalance.

I also feel this world, due in part to Internet, is becoming more and more individual. No one appears to have time to dedicate to others. Everyone seems occupied with its own business, interests or other. Little time or effort is spent on making other people happy. The values the world used to have, values such as solidarity, empathy, compassion seem to be replaced by egocentrism, self-interests, hedonism. I read that during a scientific research it was proved that Chinese university students in the USA have a mind which can move from one world to the other with an incredible ease. Not only could they swap languages in a second, but also different value system. They are individual and hedonistic with their American friends, while they are respectful and modest with their family. And they are not schizophrenics or hypocrites; their minds are really only capable of functioning in both ways without contradiction. Images done by magnetic resonance show how these students, when being asked to feel like Americans, elaborate concepts such as "mother", "myself" and "other person" in different parts of the brain. When they are asked to feel Chinese, the same concepts overlap each other in the same area.

It might be the case that we are today creating a brain which are capable of operating in both worlds, the virtual one and the real one. As well as some, in parallel, can move between different cultures and  system values. To have a bicultural mind able to mutate the architecture of the brain could prove to be necessary in our fast changing inter-connected world. It might even turn out to be such a valuable function for success that, in the long run, it might turn out to be a reproductive advantage. Individuals which grow up with two cultures can be a bridge rather than to be assimilated to one cutlure. And this gives them an extraordinary advantage, both as a mental openness, and as professional possibilities.

Let us now return to where I started. The other day a part of the roof of my cabriolet vintage car broke
so I went to look for a store which could repair the small hole. I was recommended to go to a nearby store and when I entered the small craftsman shop I was welcomed by two over seventy-year-old
"vintage" men. After explaining my need and showing them my car I asked them for the price of the repair. They told me "nothing". I asked "how much is nothing?". "Nothing" they repeated and pointed at another man outside the store who had had his leather jacket repaired by them without paying a cent.
I was almost chocked by this experience. I must add that I did offer to pay, at least to cover for their expenses, but they insisted, so I didn't.
After this experience I realized there are still some people left in the world, doing things for others without wanting something in return. Rare people like this with a solidary mind, not putting money or self-interest as the highest value in the value system.

I wish the world could consist of more people like those two old "vintage" men, so that the real world can be a wonderful one full of empathy and compassion. This way we will not be forced to hide away in the virtual world, always in search for a non-existent fulfillment.