[Edited-- phrasing altered. Comments added].

One interesting result of the prevelance of social-networking sites, such as facebook, might be their effect on the degree to which human-time can be manipulated. When less was recorded as is today– in statuses, pictures, discussions etc.– aspects of the past could be erased in a way which facilitated the assertion of certain social configurations; some information could be dropped, and other information could be connected in such a way as to facilitate the establishment of certain collectively engaged-with narratives.

I think that information will, in some ways and to some extent, continue to be used in this way. However, that so much is now made permanent and universally accessible, and that so many narratives are facilitated by that, might change the nature of the human experience of time.

The past might become more permanent, and we might become less flexible.

Similar might be said to apply to books, but the role they play now is also recent. And it’s notable that much past intellecutal exchange has involved perpetual re-interpretation and narrative re-integration of the few books both available and regularly consulted.

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Individual social experience has already been effected. Some people, primarily those who don’t fit well with contemporaneously available roles and expectations, benefit from the absence of the necessity for a unified public self. Self-representation through a singular internet profile, and the necessity for such which has recently arisen, limits the ability to go unseen here and partially seen there. To flexibly engage with current social dynamics in such a way as is compatible with one’s own unusual psychophysiology.

The homogenous concept of what a human being is implicit in sites like facebook, and promoted by widespread engagment with them (and the re-structuring of individuals by such), might not facilitate you. It certainly does not facilitate me.

To be frank, it terrifies me.

The recent changes in policy announced on the facebook blog made something clear to me: this corporation, based in a foreign country and driven by profit, has significant power to directly change the experience of those around me and, even if not directly, me. The distinctions it makes, the categories it promotes, and the options it makes available are essential to the structure of modern society. The company is, if only for a short time, a new trans-national government. And they’ve made a conservative out of me.