Rob Howard's dashboard

I simply closed my account with 3,500 "friends" none of whom would let me drive their car or buy me a cup of real (not virtual) coffee. To me, it was like being packed into a subway car with people all on their cell phones having converstations about the latest movie, their favorite rock group, pictures of the kids or the dogs, appeals for donations to scams and an intelligence level hovering around that of an early primate.

All of those "eyeballs" never amounted to anything because everyone is passive...it's for people who are bored watching Oprah and Jerry Springer. For me, it was a complete waste of time and effort and I did not feel at all bad in dumping what was a large but useless list of names.

>>> I agree with you that there are communication problems. It's something they'll need to focus on in the future. ( Delete or Edit for 15 minutes ) <<<

Ah yes, as will The folks in Darfur have to concentrate on anger management. Please, save me from the listlessness of modern multi-culti speech. One needn't take every one of these people into their office for an exam to make the statement I made. The statement was made based on behavior...provable, documented behavior that conforms to a specific list of symptoms. Rather than using feelings instead of thinking, just consult the list of symptoms.

All of the feel-good nostrums no longer hold water. There really are unbalanced modern-day Procrustes in positions of power who exert that power to bring the rest of the world into conformity with their view of how life should be lived.

The bottom line is that it is touted as a SOCIAL network. If the concept of social interaction with other humans is foreign to those who wrote it, it really doesn't matter what sort of elegant code went into making it (and glitch-ridden as it now is, with lost files, etc. it's a long way from displaying competence, let alone elegance).

As Facebook grows they could hire more Asperger's types. There are colonies of them at Microsoft and Sun (the scary thing is that the boy geeks meet the girl geeks and can likely produce double-Asperger type children...it is a genetically heritable disease. Those companies are truly breeding grounds for passing on the syndrome).

Read up on it and see if you'd want to run a business on a foundation based on the syndrome (it is a syndrome in that it is a galaxy of symptoms. Some useful, most not. If they are kept corralled writing code or other obsessive activities, they have less of an impact than if they are the helm of a company).

An interesting historical study is to read about all of the principals in dot coms that went bust during that investment bubble. Look at the similarities with the founders of many of those companies and the flaky and oddball corporate structures that emerged from them...and these were companies that were stock market darlings.

The long and short is; if there are this many people voicing the same complaints about being run rough shod and, worse, ignored by an information company like Facebook, you can be assured that many more people feel this way and given the perfidious nature of the populace, they could bail out before Facebook knew what hit them.

The thing to ask is, if a competitor offered the same services but good customer service, would you stick with Facebook? That's something a savvy investor would ask and one look at Zuckerman and crew would have that investor fleeing as fast as he could. The next big thing is always just around the corner and, unlike what the Asperger types might think, the threat won't be from Klingons in outer space.

If you were in a building designed by and ruled by a paranoid schizophrenic who lived in fear of space invaders, some of that delusional behavior would be imposed on you. You would have to live as though there was a potential for attacks from outer space or leave, or be thrown out of the building.

Having dealt with numerous people living with various stage of Asperger's Syndrome, I see where they are attracted to the potential for acceptable asocial behavior allowed in the high-tech industry. Numerous articles have been written on the concentration of Asperger's types in high-tech industries, with some companies offering health insurance that covers it (Wired magazine had an eminently readable article on this subject just a few years ago).

In reading about the personal behavior of the principals who set the tone of Facebook, one is drawn to the inescapable conclusion that, for all their success and wealth, they'd be most comfortable at home living in Mom's basement away from social contact. Looked at from that aspect, Facebook is, more accurately, an anti-social social network. The concept of those non-real virtual gifts are something from the minds of those who prefer symbolism to reality. Asperger's types are noted for setting up invisible tripwires to test if people conform to their standards...the weird standards of a Star Trek convention with people almost believing they are Star Trek characters...and those are the saner ones. many video games reflect the attitudes and concerns of Asperger's types.

So imagine if you had a few people with deeply flawed social skills empowered (and rewarded) to create a domain based on their approach to life. Is it any wonder that people are routinely locked out by computer-generated tripwires designed to prevent attack from Klingons and other imaginary malefactors?

From what I have been able to witness, the trickle-down Asperger's permeates all of Facebook and the more one conforms to those rules and avoids the hidden tripwires (notice too that there are not clear rules ever published. Read the agreement and it's curiously vague, as though one should be born with this knowledge) the more one lives their life according to an illness imposed by nature on the principals of Facebook. Note the clause where one can only bring suit in a Palo Alto court. That's emblematic of the disease that lies at the very core of Facebook..