Matt Schiavenza From the Dragon to the Apple- A Sinophile in New York

Plus Ca Change

One of my favorite movies as a kid was Defending Your Life, a 1991 film starring Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep. The premise is this: Brooks plays a middle-aged man who dies in a car accident and finds himself in a strange land called Judgment City, where he is placed on trial. The charge? He didn't exhibit enough bravery in his life. Before a panel of three judges,  Brooks' court-appointed lawyer shows video clips from Brooks' life in which he proved himself to be brave, while a prosecutor showed clips of her own in which he showed the opposite. To say anymore would spoil the story, but suffice it to say it's a funny, sharp, and enjoyable comedy.

Anyway, I couldn't help thinking that it was ahead of it's time after reading this paragraph:

Facebook Timeline is the best change Facebook has ever made.

Here's what'll happen once the Timeline profiles are launched: Your Facebook profile will go from having one central column to two, with boxes of text, photos, videos and even maps of your favorite locations. Rather than just displaying your most recent activities, your profile will become a scrapbook documenting your entire life, all the way back to your birth. Facebook will become a record of your existence: All your memories, your victories and your defeats, your loves, your losses and everything in between.

Mind you, I pulled this from a CNN article, not from a bad science fiction script. I hope Albert Brooks demands royalty payments from Mark Zuckerberg.

I wonder if in a few weeks I'll wake up, and find the following status update somewhere on my page:

September 3, 1985

First day of Kindergarten. Smeared some paste on myself. Played kickball. Ate some ice cream. Nap time rules!

(Actually, that would be oddly appropriate for grad school, too)

Facebook is a survivor. Every time they make changes, people howl and scream and say how much they hate Facebook and that they're going to quit....and it doesn't happen. It's too ingrained in our lives; too useful for event planning and crowd sourcing info and voyeuristic peeks at your high school girlfriend's photo albums.

I prefer Google+, really. I don't like how Facebook makes it such a hassle to control your privacy settings. Without thinking, I connected my Spotify account to Facebook the other day and thought- shit!, I don't need all of my friends to know I listened to Right Said Fred. All morning long.

But the idea of getting out of Facebook completely just doesn't seem feasible, like cutting your landline phone service would have been a generation ago.  In a year nobody will even remember what the old Facebook looked like.