Facebook Timeline will change the human race
Today, Facebook announced Timeline. Timeline will replace, or enhance, your profile. Your profile will no longer be just a stream of news stories about what you have been doing, but a meaningful story that you can read and write like a scrapbook. I find this to be a very profound step for Facebook to take, and a step for the entire human race.
If Facebook could track every single thing that you did, they would. At this point, privacy alarms are buzzing in your head, but you can relax. As a modern day member of society, you want to keep your life private, and it terrifies you that your personal moments are being "tracked" by a company and you feel you don't have control of your sensitive information. But on the flipside, all humans want to have a legacy. We want to be remembered, and want to remember every moment that we care about. We also like to select every moment that defines us, and when you put those moments together, they create your identity -- your timeline.
I believe that Facebook is 20% keeping up with your friends, and 80% sharing and showing off your life. We share photos, our location, what we're eating, what songs we're listening to, who we're with, what articles we're reading, and much more. We tell the world who we are through all of these actions. Until now, this type of sharing has been very transient. In fact, life itself is extremely transient and is always passing us by. As a species, we have battled this and continued to evolve because we started to document findings and create vast resources of knowledge -- first in books and now the internet. This phenomenon has never been possible for an individual human life, until now.
We are nostalgic creatures. Memories are the most valuable thing to us second to experiences. Experiences turn into memories, and memories are revisited later to reflect and derive a sense of who we are. It reminds us that we are alive and we are on a path to fulfillment. Unfortunately, our memory sucks, which is why we take pictures and keep journals. Constantly taking photos and taking the time to sit down and journal your life takes a lot of effort. Now that we're already sharing every little thing we do on Facebook, we have all been journaling our lives and you may not have even realized.
Everyone has a story, and now you can read anyone's story like a book. The fact that soon 1 billion people will have their life published to the world means that humans, as a race, will have taken another step towards immortalizing ourselves. Every life can be recorded and shared, which has never been possible before. This isn't just another product feature, this is a revolution. Your life is a story, and now it is timeless.
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