Hasta La Ideas

Seemingly just-published on Design Observer–no comments yet–Jessica Helfand explores the ecosystem of Facebook, the ramifications for privacy and self, and the particular terrain of posting images (yes, of you) on the social network. How’s this:

For anyone under the age of, say thirty or so, the whole notion of open-source thinking is a native habitat that can be applied to everything from group-table seating in restaurants to sharing playlists to data clouds (I tag, you tag, we all tag) — in short, there’s nothing proprietary because people in this particular demographic group don’t perceive space as anything you can own. They see it as infinite real estate, to be grazed but not commandeered, shared but not colonized. The beauty of this thinking, besides the fact that it is inherently democratic and gracious, is that it lends itself to a kind of progressive evolution in which everyone wins. It’s commendable, really, and speaks well for us all.

On the other hand (and I’m not the first, nor will I be the last to mention it) there are implicit pitfalls in this rapidly growing virtual arena, particularly for those for whom social skills have not caught up with, say, their computational skills. On Facebook, this leads to huge numbers of pictures by kids of kids at parties acting stupid — yes, stupid — with cigarettes and sunglasses and cans of beer and face paint. It’s kind of sweet and sort of sad and probably meaningless (or so way too many parents of teenagers tell me) and lighten up, I’m told, because they’re just posturing, showing the world just how radical they can be. It’s safe, because after all, they’re not drinking and driving. They’re just on screen.

Or are they?

Read the whole thing here.

And in the same breath, don’t forget about Steve Portigal’s piece on Core77 last week, Where does Twitter go from here?

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