Zuckerberg lives

I just watched "The Social Network".  (Why didn't they call it "Social Network"?  Cleaner.)

Mark Zuckerberg is still alive, despite being (portrayed as) a conscienceless user asshole.  No, I didn't believe the young associate putting a sweet Hollywood bow on him at the end.  Although it did look as though she might be trying to cheer up the poor little rich boy with a little white lie...

The apparent fact the Zuckerberg is such a creep and is still alive is actually good news.  Not for the business world, which is full of similar successful self-centered sociopaths, but for the political world.

Movies come out every year in which the entire government is run by venal conspiracies that would just as soon kill you as frame you for a crime you didn't commit.  "Enemy of the State" had both.  The Bourne abstraction movies have a shadow government immune from democratic control.  I'm sure I'll enjoy the matrix-y paranoia of "The Adjustment Bureau".

For me, the question has lately been, with trillions of dollars at stake and with humans' obvious willingness to kill over paltry amounts, is our government subject to even worse than the obvious perennial purchase by moneyed interests.  Goldman Sachs has run our economic policy, irrespective of the party in power, for decades.  They got to the top the old-fashioned way; they stole, uh, sorry, creamed off huge proceeds and bought power by contributing to both parties.

Yet if push came to shove and a less wishy-washy reformer than Barack Obama won the Presidency against all the elite cultural factors stacked against him (or her - but not Hillary, she's too DLC), how far would the interests of wealth go to retain their control?  Yeah, this sounds paranoid even to me, its thinker.  But...

Zuckerberg lives.  Maybe popular democracy remains possible, despite the current overwhelming dominance of the wealthy elite.

And I did really enjoy seeing Larry Summers portrayed as an arrogant, short-sighted, ignoramus asshole.  Too bad the filmmakers couldn't prevail upon him to play himself.

Harvard is everywhere in this movie, and it doesn't come off well.  But now Harvard has Drew Faust, and the federal government has Elizabeth Warren.  Maybe the problem all along has been Harvard men, and what we really need is Harvard women to save us.

(Shhh.  Don't tell the wealthy.  Let them get comfortable with Faust's and Warren's admission to the club.  Then bust up the club good and proper.)

Judas Oscariot

 I have no idea whether "The Social Network" will win the best picture Oscar.  Maybe it already has.  I don't watch award shows.  The producers have the gall to broadcast a 3-hour ad for Hollywood and still to lard it with ads for cars and beer and boner pills or whatever.  Awards shows are tedious, besides.  If they'd just show the 100 best trailers and the 100 sexiest stars, then I might watch.

I don't know whether Mark Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook, but I do know that he is a villain.  Practically everything he has ever done with the site proves that.  Repeated privacy violations, followed by insincere apologies (as evident from the next violation/apology cycle), have steadily removed privacy.  At this point, I assume that anything I ever do on FB is recorded and available to FB's marketing partners.  They've already been caught targeting users based on their private messages.  They've already been caught posting chat sessions for the world to see.  Do you need to be smacked with a 2x4 to get the message?

FB is selling you and your demographic attributes to the highest bidder.  That's why "Harvard" shows up on my thumbnail despite my efforts to get rid of it.

Zuckerberg likes to wrap himself in the mantle of free information.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  He only wants to liberate your information from you for the benefit of access to your wallet.  Those of us on FB are just marks, succumbing to a con because we like hearing from our friends.  It's exploitation.

Facebook continues to allow virus writers to spread their crap.  Click on a video a friend has posted, and you can never tell whether you'll see a video - or post the same video to all your friends, as if you'd clicked Like.  It's an abuse, and FB won't stop it.

Here's what I want to think about:  How can we build an open source, decentralized social network with the benefits of Facebook and without the soul-selling drawbacks?