Fearbook

This is it folks. Time to start burrowing into the ground. Build your shelters, stockpile your supplies, put a sack over your head, the end is coming. And what, pray-tell, is the sure sign of impending doom you ask?

Global warming?
The economic meltdown?
Birds falling out of the sky?

No, much worse. Goldman Sachs invested in Facebook.

Aaaaah, run for the hills, save the women and children, call 911 ... wait ... what?

Last week I caught an episode of PBS talking head Charlie Rose. He and a panel of economic experts were analyzing the global investment banking and securities firm's recent investment of (US) $450 million in the social networking giant Facebook.

Now, I'm no financial expert, far from it, but listening to the tenor of the conversation it was fairly easy to identify the underlying theme: fear. I always sort of admired Charlie Rose as an interviewer for ability to extract more in-depth viewpoints of his subjects and engage in thoughtful conversation regarding the issues of the day.

Apparently all of the insightful probing and intelligent discourse took a vacation when news broke of Goldman Sachs investment. The crux of the conversation revolved around the new-found legitimacy that Facebook had gained. Goldman Sachs is a large and well-established firm, an investment from them is tantamount to going from D-list actor to winning an Oscar.

What proceeded from this observation was the list of companies and investors who should now be 'afraid.' This included everyone from Google to Microsoft. At one point, an analyst went as far as to say some of these companies should even be 'terrified.' The used military terms like 'assault' and 'fortification' in their discussions of business strategy.

If I didn't know better, I could have sworn that Facebook had just taken over the world, with Goldman Sachs giving them the maps to the world leaders homes.

A lot of this fearful thinking is owed to the fact that nobody really knows what the growth of Facebook means. One of the descriptions floating about the net is that the number of Facebook members is so large, if it were a country, it would be the third most populated on the planet. Oooo, scary stuff.

But it isn't a country. If anything, Facebook is a good idea whose massive growth is attributed to the proliferation of technology and the internet across the planet. Facebook users are comprised of a huge diversity of people, with an equally diverse number of opinions and not all of them are friends. The only thing they have in common is the service. In much the same way, just about everybody in the world uses some form of phone, does that mean phones are taking over the world?

I'm not even sure it's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, really understands what the explosion of Facebook means; and with a gajillion dollars in his pocket, I don't suppose he cares.

It's not the thing we're so afraid of, it's the change it brings. Facebook is changing the way people use the internet, how we interact socially, while also breaking down our traditional understanding of how companies should function. Facebook will likely render some services obsolete and force other companies to close their doors. But isn't that how the business world works? For every company pushed out, two more will find a way to ride the new wave.

I get it. There are times when we should be cautious about the latest new thing. History informs us of the importance of careful scrutiny in exploring the undiscovered country. History also informs us that burning witches and persecuting revolutionary thinkers was not the best way to deal with the unknown.

I often wonder why it is we are so willing to be afraid, and less compelled to discover. Is there a strange comfort in our fears? Is it not easier to demonize that which we do not understand than to give up what is familiar?

If Facebook even exists ten years from now we might wonder what all the fuss was about. Having spent a few decades on this planet I've come to realize that change comes whether it is welcome or not. Amazingly though, we manage, we adapt and we move on. As big and mysterious as the Facebook phenomenon is, it is essentially just a human creation for our own amusement. It's time will come too.

FDR still has it right.