Keith wrote:
> Quite beside the fact that usage of Facebook in America, its place
> of origin, is already falling away, its hoped-for customer base is
> upside down. It has been a fashion that started among the
> economically poorest segment of all in an advanced country, namely
> teenagers.
He gives the kids free samples,
Because he knows full well
That today's young innocent faces
Will be tomorrow's clientele.
-- Tom Lehrer, "The Old Dope Peddler"
Not to disagree with the rest of your post, where you continue:
> Unfortunately, however, teenagers are not only the economically
> poorest segment in the advanced countries already but they are going
> to be even poorer in the years to come as adults increasingly shut
> them out of the world of work by working for many more years
> themselves.
Well, in a cyberpunk future -- cf. Gibson's Sprawl trilogy or Bruce
Sterling's work [1] -- electronic networking won't provide lux
condos, six-figure incomes and entry to the 20%. But it may well
provide those in the middle -- those who don't abandon all hope due to
innate stupidity or to drugs, alcohol, frustration and rage -- to live
in the cracks as do Gibson's or Bruce Sterling's characters.
As for the market hype surrounding Farcebook -- the IPO, the jockeying
among bankers and securities weenies and all that -- I wouldn't put
money on your prediction,
> No, Facebook hasn't a chance of success.
nor on the contrary one.
> Instead of being a future consumer market, the jobless young are
> more likely to use their mobile phones to gather 100, 200, 300 or
> 1,000 rioters instead when provoked by one incident or another.
But, being, as you point out, in their optimal creative (and most
resilient) years, there are probably alternatives to flash-crowd riots
that can emerge from the technology which old geezers such as you and
I haven't thought of. Sterling and Gibson, inter alia, have thought
of some of them.
- Mike
[1] Sterling has projected numerous different takes on the future of
today's youth disenfranchised by the very processes we've been
talking about here. I think it's a mistake to overlook
thoughtful fiction when thinking about this stuff. In my high
school senior year, my English class was taught by a charming 80
year old man who'd spent his entire career at that school. I once
quoted Thoreau as having said, "I read no novels". Dr. Smith
replied, "What a shame!".
Short story intro to Sterling's take: Bicycle Repairman, in _A
Good Old-Fashioned Future_. The eponymous repairman lives and
works in a freight container in the burned-out, riot-trashed
shopping-mall atrium of an otherwise functioning, pricey high-rise.
His mother lives in a lux condo on an upper floor. His mother
wants him to get a job. He wants to build the perfect racing
bike.
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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