Facebook, Google, and Microsoft's Footsteps
Whenever I hear people buzzing about the importance of Facebook and Google, I wish I was old enough to remember the rise of Microsoft. There is a lot of noise about privacy issues with both Facebook and Google. Did these same fears exist with Microsoft? I know Microsoft as a well-regulated, accepted giant in the corporate world: huge, but nothing to be afraid of. As I read these articles on the effects of Facebook, I wonder if we will come to view it the same way as Microsoft in a few years or decades.
Microsoft changed the world by providing an operating system that made computers accessible to businessmen instead of just programmers. Now that there's a computer in every dorm room, Facebook gives us a way to connect those accessible computers while Google lets us utilize them to find information. So maybe it's not the Facebook Effect after all that we're experiencing, but just another step in a decades-long information revolution (centuries-long, if you count the printing press and all the change that fostered). What do you think?
Microsoft changed the world by providing an operating system that made computers accessible to businessmen instead of just programmers. Now that there's a computer in every dorm room, Facebook gives us a way to connect those accessible computers while Google lets us utilize them to find information. So maybe it's not the Facebook Effect after all that we're experiencing, but just another step in a decades-long information revolution (centuries-long, if you count the printing press and all the change that fostered). What do you think?
Comments
When Microsoft showed up the internet was almost nothing. Even in the time of Windows ME most websites looked similar to the ridiculous MySpace pages filled with strings of text on some mis-aligned pattern background surrounded by irrelevant images and music players. The internet couldn't even agree on web standards let alone systems capable of endangering our day-to-day privacy. The issue with Microsoft was its size. Microsoft successfully broke anti-trust laws including a complete domination of the web browser industry by leveraging their operating system. But our privacy was never in danger from Microsoft or people using other Microsoft systems.
Facebook and Google are different stories. They are huge, but we don't really fear their size, we fear their content. MySpace sold personal information and Facebook could do the same - except Facebook is far more accurate with our identities. Facebook now leverages the power to sell our identities.
Google has street view and satellite pictures of every building in this country. Google also runs our social communication so they have access to virtually every text-character we put online. Even if Google was so small that it couldn't purchase a vending machine, the content they control is extremely volatile. This is what concerns us these days...