Facebook in 2020: The Fears of 2009
Posted by Guillame Foutry @ June 12th, 2009 in Social Marketing
Any anticipation of what the future will be like is always a projection of the fears of the present. The movie industry is a perfect example of that, from Terminator that pictures machines eager to annihilate the human race to The Day After Tomorrow that portrays a global environmental catastrophe due to human carelessness. So let’s try to imagine (in a less dramatic way) what Facebook could be like in 2020 by consciously projecting our fears.
Facebook is your home (well, it stormed into your home)
Facebook has long overcome Google (what is Google?) as the preferred homepage for internet users, but it is also your home wherever you go. On your mobile phone, on your kitchen TV, your bathroom mirror. Everywhere. Facebook has become the giant network that no one can escape: emails have disappeared; Facebook is the universal Open ID and you do not remember what a brick and mortar bank is as they went bankrupt (I know, again) due to the competition of FB.
Profile for life (and more than that…)
Facebook has already dealt with the problem of users who passed away. But in 2013 they go beyond that by creating a Facebook cemetery where you can build a monument for your beloved one. Facebook takes care of you, from the cradle to the grave.
You do not know your Facebook rights (but you feel like a turkey on Thanksgiving Day)
They have changed the TOS (Terms of Service) so many times that you have no idea what you are entitled to and who owns the content. What you know is that advertisement has invaded Facebook, which does not prevent the network from charging you for it. And you pay for it as you are completely trapped: you have been on the platform for more than 15 years, so you have put a lot of information on the network, so it would be too painful to move elsewhere. And there is no elsewhere anyway.
Mark Zuckerberg world domination attempt (Darth Vader is back)
The CEO of Facebook is completely megalomaniac in 2015 (rumors say he’s always been) and uses all the information on the network to set up a giant blackmailing program on the economic, political and cultural rulers of the planet. By that time, Facebook will have more data than the CIA or any intelligence service in the world.
Facebook Refuzniks (the resistance)
As Facebook has become so pervasive over the years, a minority of people have refused to use it, becoming the new outcasts. They organize themselves and forge alliances with survivors of the previous Facebook wars with Google and Twitter. They discover the most efficient way to fight the dark force: showing to the rest of the world the true meaning of friendship and remembering people the importance of physical interactions, like it happened in Wall-e.
Of course all these ideas are too exaggerated, but this is the point of projections isn’t it? And what are your fears regarding Facebook and social media in general? By the way, in case you did not know, there are several predictions that the world would end in 2012. So we might not live long enough to see all these things happening.
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