[Written fitfully (and, it turns out, rather inaccurately in all respects), one year ago:]
They told me back in grad school that reality is constructed, that community is paramount, and that technological capabilities are burgeoning forth unfound possibilities. Indeed, they (de)claimed, the internetworked generation has dispersed social clout along horizontal nodes in ways democracy could have only dreamed of, fundamentally altering the dynamics of political and social norms and power.
But I have been watching Libyan rebels and their cell phones, and I am not so sure that Zuckerberg is the new sixty billion dollar savior that they all thought he was. For those who are anti-Muammar, unlike in Egypt, Facebook wrought only impending doom, a Benghazi bloodbath, until Ms. Clinton nee Rodham pulled the about-face that launched two hundred Tomahawks and a barely-stifled Dukakis scream.
So now I am imagining a new brilliant screenplay for a movie, wherein a passel of puerile and privileged Harvard legacies concoct a dazzling scheme to copycat Napster, except that the product that you commodify is your friends instead of your music. Unfortunately, in a tragically Hobbesian and melodramatic move, one of the young bloods undercuts the others, patents the web algorithms, and escapes to California, where drooling Wall Street consorts slap down greenbacks in return for first dibs on shares in the now-hyper-inflated Company That Sells Nothing (Except Your Personal Information to Its Advertisers). The thwarted, wronged, victimized cohorts retire to sip margaritas in Cape Cod and plan their lawsuits and revenge. Eventually, in the climactic scene, a diminutive representative of the jilted parties confronts the Hobbesian antihero, holding up a laptop displaying a webpage on which the signatures of millions demand that justice be championed and liberty defended. Just as the curtain begins to drop on the villain, however, he pulls a Smith & Wesson from his pocket and puts sixteen rounds through the laptop’s Ethernet card. The final scenes show the villain driving from the hugely lucrative initial public offering to several of his private chateaus in France as the soundtrack from Slumdog Millionaire swells through a semi-psychedelic scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey (which was ten years ago) and the millions of signatures swirl through the atmosphere before forming into the shape of a Tomahawk missile …
