Hello in haste, snorkellers mine. No links today, for your lazy little arses to ignore, no – should you wish to read up on this then get your googly eyes on, or your bingly bong or your yahoo moo, whatever takes your fancy and searches your boat, and go get clickety on this story’s topic’s ass. Inna jungle stylee.
Briefly, it’s that nice tweedy Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the gentleman inventor of t’interweb ( and no, I have no idea whether he’s tweedy, or a gentleman, or whether he invented t’interweb in a garden shed in the Yorkshire Dales, but the fact remains that he should be and he should have) who has, in brief, pronounced that Facebook and that horrible little turd Zuckerberg (and no, I don’t know whether Zuckerberg is a turd but he seems so – well – unpolished, so one must draw one’s own conclusions) are, between master and monstrous creation, about to destroy the internet.
The basis of Timbo’s hypothesis is that the internet needs to be free to work (I know, never trust a hippy – but bear with him here) and that the ‘Book and the Zuckerbergster (and, in fairness, all social media of its ilk) are trapping users and information and then refusing to share. I’ve said it before (and if I haven’t, then I meant to) and I’ll say it again (if I haven’t already it said it, then I’ll say it again in the future – but you may have to remind me), once you’re in his Face – you’re never getting out. It’s just a little too Brave New World for me, I’m afraid. With a dash of Terminator and a few sprinkles of I,Robot. Ooooh, ooooh – 2001: A Space Odyssey, don’t get me started.
Where will it all end? In the instantaneous and spontaneous combustion of most of the ‘Book’s apparent 400m users, probably. Which Lord Young might consider an acceptable margin of error.
But that’s not the point. No, the point of today’s diatribe is a little compare and contrast exercise. Compare – Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the internet and then gave it away for free, for the betterment of mankind. Contrast – the odious demon-child Zuckerberg and others of his ilk, who have a taken the gift freely given and done their utmost to fuck it up for everyone in the constant search for their next billion.
This is probably a metaphor. For something.
thewordmonger 