photo art by jeff

Special Guest Post by A.A.C. Puryear
(Enjoy this post? Read other articles contributed by A.A.C.)

Remember a time when tag referred to that children’s game, the words “friend” and “message” weren’t used as verbs, the phrase “wall post” made absolutely no sense, and poking a person was not just a click away? Yeah, that wasn’t as long ago as it might feel.

Facebook.com has grown vastly in its four-year lifespan. When Mark Zuckerberg created the site in his sophomore year at Harvard in 2004, its only members were his fellow students in the Ivy League school, but now it has expanded all around the world, available to anyone over 13 with an email address. Facebook even has its own company headquarters in Palo Alto, California!

Facebook has been an appealing way for young people all over the world to interact with each other in all sorts of new ways. Site users have the opportunity to show their own personal photos and videos to all their friends in an easy manner, join and create groups for specific interests, cause, and inside jokes, advertise upcoming events, and above all, communicate with their friends online in perhaps one of the easiest ways possible. No longer do we have to save email addresses and AIM screen names to keep in contact with people we don’t see on a regular basis. On Facebook, all we have to do is enter a friend’s name into a search bar and add him or her to our friend list, now known as “friending” (spell check didn’t like that one), and we can say something to them via message, wall post, or Facebook chat. And ever since the arrival of the multitude of new Facebook applications, site users can do all sorts of crazy things with their profile, whether it be making or taking a quiz a quiz, sending a friend a fake drink, or encouraging others to take a side in the ongoing battle of Pirates vs. Ninjas.

With photography being a hobby of mine, I’ve personally enjoyed the relaxing ease of being able to share all sorts of pictures with my friends, yet my favorite ability that Facebook gives me is the one for which it was primarily made. Being able to communicate quickly and easily with my friends in faraway places have been revolutionary. While sitting in the college dorm room, I felt no distance from my high school friends, despite the fact that they were actually in different states. Even my dad got a Facebook account when he was deployed to Kosovo during my senior year of high school as a way to keep in touch with my brother and me.

With Facebook being such a popular way for people to communicate electronically, I can only help but ponder the site’s future. Will it be just another fad of a decade like disco music or Beanie Babies? Or will it instead bear a presence in the years to come like the cell phone, which has been continually modified year after year to fit more comfortably into our lifestyles?

It’s possible in that in the years to come, we may look at Facebook as one of those crazy things we did as kids. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that something that was once so popular became either a thing of the past or a rare novelty in the present. When was the last time you caught a flick at the drive-in movie theater or played with a yo-yo? Facebook could be replaced by something more appealing to society or people could just lose interest, or worse, something could happen to it that would shut it down for good.

However, I hope and expect that Facebook is here to stay and will evolve in ways to meet our needs even more. We continue to adapt our technology in ways never before thought possible that make our lives more convenient both personally and professionally. Take a look at the Internet for example. Once upon a time, it was a place with few website and the only way to connect to it was to hook the phone line into the computer, leaving you with a slow connection and temporarily disabled telephone. Now, we can access the Internet at incredible speeds from our laptops wherever a wireless hotspot is available to view multitudes of sites. Companies can create sites to sell their goods online as well as in the store, and average people like you and me can build their own sites to express themselves in whatever fashion they choose.

And it seems that Facebook is already preparing itself for the future. For example, the iPhone has a Facebook application separate from the Internet; you can go straight to Facebook as you would for AOL Instant Messenger. And maybe Facebook will find its way into the working world. After all, twenty years ago people didn’t use email to communicate with colleagues and clients, but in the present day, it’s almost impossible to not use email in some work situations. Perhaps Facebook could fill some unforeseen practical need in our professional lives.

Now, I’m interested to read what you think on the subject. Feel free to post comments on how you think Facebook will affect society. Is it just a fad or will it be used in the future? If used in the future, in what ways?