Late Night Rumination

I finally joined Facebook. With my real, full name.

I know that this shouldn't have been such a difficult thing to do. But I like anonymity. What if I was contacted by or became tempted myself to contact people from high school? What strange and buried memories, secrets, embarrassments would rear their ugly heads? Would I lose that bizarrely comforting nostalgia if my first crush sent me a message to say that he's married and has three children? I don't want everyone to know what I'm doing or thinking or where I am all the time. 'But,' I thought, 'might as well jump on the damn band wagon.' Create a few cyberspace tattoos that I'll regret. It's all part of growing up in the 21st century.

There's a good chance I'll cancel it...

But, being a voyeur at heart, I will enjoy it in the mean time. What do we lose with this new networking? What do we gain? Will we ever be the same? Politicians 20 years from now will have to scramble to explain the bongs and beer cans and lascivious slogans that are plastered to their profiles right now...

Computers were little more than first a source of entertainment and then a marginally helpful tool for most of my youth. I was reprimanded in high school because for awhile I refused to type papers up -- I preferred to hand-write them.

I know that it's useless to resist the tide here. There's no point in going back. And it's silly to write about this, because most everyone has. But I still can't help being surprised by the feeling that we've fallen unquestioningly into something that we don't fully understand yet. A uniquely human pattern, and one that's gotten us into trouble many times before.

Must my Encyclopedia Brittanica lay fallow forever?
-N.