Facebook musings

Not too long ago, keeping track of your friends from your primary school and secondary school days was next to impossible. I mean how do you even begin to search out for that long-never-seen friend of yours if you don't even have an inkling where in the world that person is right now?

But, times have changed...oh, boy how times have changed.

The social-networking website phenomenon that is Facebook is radically changing the way we connect to people. Long-lost friends suddenly appear out of nowhere, and before you even realise it, a friend you know is a friend of a friend of a friend. Then you begin to realise how small this world actually is. Sure, great distances may separate physically separate you and your long lost buddies, but in cyberspace, that's nothing. Your friends are only a poke away!

I'm no Facebook nut, but I find it a usefool tool for looking for people whom I've lost contact with, and vice versa. Through it I've come into contact with people whom I've not met for over 20 years! People who I thought I'd never ever meet ever again; people who I've basically stored in the "Perry's Past Friends Box".

Like I said in my previous post, technology never ceases to amaze me.

Yet, despite all its wonderful bells and whistles, technology is only as great as the people who created it. And there lies the problem. People are flawed, and so technology can only be that way as well - flawed.

How else do you explain the reason for the mighty Facebook to lump people from all parts of Wales under England? Facebook says it was due to a 'bug', which is a pretty convenient way of saying that it was a technical glitch, and error in the programming code, in short, it's all the computer's fault.

But, I suspect the 'bug' was faulty human beings in the first place.

You can read the whole story about this 'error' and people's reaction to it at the BBC website here.