Zuckerberg & The Professor

Regular readers may go, "Ohhhhhh noooo, he's going back to Gilligan's Island," one of my all time favorite television shows, which began in the mid 1960s, but the episodes of which aired for decades after the show stopped production in 1967. There were many good lessons given during the show's original 3 television seasons and nearly 100 episodes. In one episode, Gilligan discovers some seeds on a bush in the jungle. He finds out that when he eats the seeds, he can read the minds of the other castaways. Naturally, the others all want seeds too, and Gilligan brings back seeds for all. At first the castaways are all thrilled and amused with their newly found power, but then they begin to argue, as they now know the negative thoughts they also have toward each other. Gilligan talks with the Professor, the island's intellectual, about the ongoing strife, and the Professor tells Gilligan he thought the mind reading ability would help to promote world peace, an idea Gilligan "thinks," but doesn't say, is absurd. The Professor reads Gilligan's mind and he is deeply offended over Gilligan's disparaging thought, so he stomps off (that kind of shoots 'world peace' in the ass!). As the "former" friends all argue, the always bungling, but well meaning Gilligan decides to go into the jungle and set fire to the bush. The seeds are destroyed and the crisis is over. Now...

In more recent times, enter Mark Zuckerberg and his band of... ah, his band of... ah, techsperts. "If only we could connect the entire world on an online website, where everybody could say what they wanted; sort of the ultimate 'free speech' forum. A site where the only things needed would be an Internet connection and a device to reach the Internet. Wow! This would be as great as the castaways of Gilligan's Island being able to read minds. It would unite the world, work to fight poverty, support freedom, and"  ...,well, you get the drift. People the world over could communicate with one another easily. This was just too good to be true. And it was too good to be true; at least, to some extent. The world is a complex place, full of all kinds of people with lots of personalities, mood swings and motivations. Believe it or not, there are actually BAD people in the world, and Zuckerberg's Facebook, and other "social media" sites, gave these "bad people" a way into the lives of many unsuspecting users. Fake stories and conspiracy theories were posted on ALL of these websites, although Facebook became the "face" (no pun intended) of this whole part of the modern tech world. I almost wrote "phenomenon," but this has NOT been a phenomenon, but rather a situation just waiting to happen and to gain a foothold. People and organizations who had been voiceless in their lives were given a chance to join the world, and to do so "essentially" anonymously, some with venom dripping from their fangs as they "got even" with the world for the state of their own lives and with "enemies," real or perceived. Egomaniacs saw a chance to tout themselves.   

Understand, the technology CAN'T be un-invented, but the idea that all of this technology shouldn't be regulated is sheer nonsense, although the particulars as to how to regulate it are difficult to determine; after all, the Internet is WORLDWIDE. This is no longer some television or radio stations in a country being regulated by their own people in some manner. There is no bush with seeds in the jungle to set afire to solve the problem. Remember too, however, that the social media websites are not governed by constitutional "free speech," as many people do not understand that term. The "free speech" part of the Constitution applies to government suppression of free speech, and of course, that protection ends at both the boundaries of the U.S. and at the boundaries of private individuals and of private companies These websites are privately owned companies and they can limit, restrict or stop certain people or groups from posting anything and everything, if they so choose. Remember too, governments have chosen to get involved on social media sites, so this is not just some individuals or political groups that are leading "the bad guys and girls." With tremendous amounts of funding, these governments can aggressively operate under the cover of seemingly independent groups, but they can push their own agendas, or help allies to push their agendas for them, or they can launch cyber attacks on others or hack into websites, which has the potential to shutdown electric power in large parts of some countries. Remember... I mentioned egomaniacs...

Zuckerberg and Company had a nice idea, and there's no question that people used the services provided, although we also know that personal privacy was damaged by social media shenanigans and that Facebook and other sites opened up new worlds for criminals, including criminal regimes in the world. So Mark Zuckerberg and the Professor have some idealism in common, but Zuckerberg also has something in common with Dr. Frankenstein. How far that "something" goes is the question.    
WORD HISTORY:
Burden-This word, related to the verb "bear" (meaning, "to carry, to give birth"), an original English word from its Germanic roots, which goes back to Indo European "bher," which meant, "to bear a burden, to carry." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "burthin(ja)," meaning, "something carried, a thing borne." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "byrðen" (=byrthen") and meaning, "burden, weight, load;" also, "a fee, a charge" (also "byrd" was another form, meaning "burden"). This then became "burthen," before the modern form. Forms in the other Germanic languages: German "Bürde" (burden, load), Low German Saxon had "Börden" (weight, load, burden), but now has the shorter, "Böör," Frisian had "berde," but no longer uses a form of the word, Dutch had "borde," but apparently no longer uses it, Icelandic has "byrði" (burden), Danish and Norwegian "byrde" (burden), Swedish "börda" (burden).