The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

It seems cruel to pick on my pal Mark Zuckerberg now that everybody and their friends are piling on the poor guy when he’s down. I was just listening to an inspirational little speech he gave to his adoring employees the other day, imploring them to go out and make the world a public forum, one that would bring the world peace, capital P. It was positively evangelical. Facebook would bring love and understanding to the community space that was expanding like an exploding nova. The cheering and clapping Facebook minions ate it with a silver spoon, their faces upturned to the jumbotron the way Apple worshippers used to gaze at Steve Jobs. Somewhere in the back they must have been pouring Kool-Aid into those ubiquitous water bottles everyone carries with them to hydrate. Enlightenment Now! Kum Bah Yah!

A few blogs back I was mumbling about Bill Gate’s comments concerning the future of Artificial Intelligence, how he thought it would probably be positive, robots cleaning up spills on the factory floors and all, and my take was here was one of the guys who brought us personal computers but didn’t have a real keen sense of where his innovations might ultimately lead. Give him credit, he’s a little busy curing malaria and other world diseases, not much time to ponder the ramifications of Microsoft down the road to the future which is now in our rearview mirror.

Mark Zuckerberg put together a social club, mostly a way to hook up his Ivy League pals, then kept extrapolating, turned it into a global network of ‘friends’. Got himself some folks who knew how to monetize it, went public and now has billions in corporate worth. Or, I guess we should say, had. That stock of theirs is bleeding bitcoins with all the investigations into information sharing with everybody from Russian bots to the Trump campaign to every advertiser on the planet. Did Mark have a far-reaching vision of where things would lead?

I think he did. Just not a real accurate one. Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men? Looks like he saw himself as Santa. Or Jesus Christ. Either way, kind of missed the mark, Mark. Instead, you opened us all up like a corporate can opener, like we were a Pandora’s box you thought you knew what was inside of but really didn’t. You turned us all into marks, targets for advertisers, targets for politicians, targets for Russian bots. You laid the groundwork for faux news, for a world where truth and fiction become indistinguishable, where charlatans undermine democracy and demagogues become presidents. You made a fortune, Markie. You made a mess too. Thanks for the Big Vision. Oh, and thanks for the Kool-Aid.

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