The power of Facebook

CNBC aired a TV special right before Obama's State of the Union Address--entitled The Facebook Effect--which was based on the book by David Kirkpatrick.  It detailed the full true story of the way Facebook began and developed, where it is now, and where it could potentially go in the future.  At first I watched the show because of its close parallel to the Social Network movie.  Basically everything in the movie, aside from the Mark Zuckerberg's love drama, is more or less what actually happened.  And when the show started to go into details about where Facebook could be in the future, changing the way the world works forever, I began to get slightly skeptical.  As if a website could really fundamentally change human interaction?

But here I am, posting a blog, which is linked to my Facebook account, which is linked to my 680 Facebook friends.  If you're reading this, there's about a 50% chance you found it through Facebook (I know because Blogger shows me these statistics; and don't worry, it doesn't actually show me who exactly viewed the blog).

More importantly, modern day Facebook helps start revolutions.  On January 25th, the Egyptian people successfully formed the first protest through Facebook in which about 30,000 people ultimately participated (60,000 people signed up on Facebook).  The government retaliated, and shut down Twitter use and many cell phone towers.  And still, this was the largest protest in the past 30 years and likely will not be the last of its kind.

Meanwhile, Obama's Facebook page is one of the most "liked." The White House has its own page too, and for the first time ever there's a person who's job it is to monitor that page, post updates, and respond to regular people's comments. So it's most appropriate that Obama's speech, and his call for more investment in technology and higher education in it, would follow the amazing Facebook story.

When Mark Zuckerberg made Facebook, as he said many times, he didn't know what it was, or what it could be.  It's pretty clear now that nobody really could have predicted all of this.  So maybe Facebook really does have the power to change lives, if we decide that's what we want to do with it.  And that is the real power of Facebook.

African Cats arrive on Earth Day

Earth Day, April 22nd of every year, is intended to remind everyone of the importance of caring about the environment, and celebrating everything it has given us.  In modern days, it's usually celebrated with a bunch of hippies getting together to listen to music, dance and party.  

Davis, California throws a weekend-long Whole Earth Day festival in May, which brings people together and commits to having zero-waste and alcohol-free entertainment.  The festival is great because it manages to entertain with just about no externalities to the Earth.  

Disney will participate in Earth Day this year too, by releasing its film entitled "African Cats."  African Cats is about...big cats in Africa: lions and cheetahs.  The movie airs in theaters beginning April 22nd, and Disney will contribute $0.20 of every ticket sold during the first week to save the Savannah in Kenya, where the movie was filmed.  Disney guarantees a donation of at least $100,000 to the program.  With great cinematography and lots of human interest, the movie shows lion and cheetah families trying to make it in the wild lands of Africa--and is guaranteed to be awesome.

See the big wild cats April 22-28th, play with the hippies in Davis May 6-8th, and the Earth will be a happier place.  I'm looking forward to it already! 

Elderly Wisdom Circle

As each year of life passes us by, most people progressively become more refined, better judges of character and situations, and generally better people.  Things they learn from past events are irreplaceable, and make them much wiser than before.  But who wants to wait for life to go by to learn to make good decisions?  What "young" people like us need is some advice from the generations who have gone through our stages of life, so that we can make less misguided choices due to our inexperience.

Now, there's a website for that.  Elderly Wisdom Circle offers free and confidential advice from the elderly generation, ages 60 to 105--the people who have seen it all.  The website was founded in Walnut Creek, California in 2001 and connects people who need advice the most to those who have the best advice.  Users, who are usually between ages 15 and 35, submit questions, and elderly advice-givers respond via email.  The forum acknowledges the value of knowledge the older generation has, and creates a modern and efficient way to share it by connecting people online.  

Because many people don't have their own grandparents whom they can ask personal questions--and not everybody wants to--elderwisdomcircle.org/ bridges the generational barriers.  It can help all of us benefit from the wisdom of others' life experiences, and become better people, sooner. 

Happy 2011!

This New Year's went by without any reported human casualties.  Are people just too happy celebrating to wage wars or blow themselves up, or are the news people too busy celebrating to report bad things happening?  Maybe miraculously everyone was just happy for 24 hours around the world.  Except for the poor birds and fish in Arkansas.