Think about the impact technology has on our society today. Could you go more than a couple days without it? I’m guessing the answer is no for most of our population. Technology has ingrained itself on our civilization and will be with us for the remainder of time. In the movie The Social Network, we took a look at Mark Zuckerberg, and his role in the creation and evolution of Facebook. Through this movie, the limitations of communication in the new world of advanced technology were brought to life. Also, the difficulties in the adoption of new ideas, specifically in the case of Zuckerberg, was explored. In this essay, I will discuss these limitations, and how they impacted Zuckerberg through the creation of Facebook.
One of the more prevalent issues presented in the movie, The Social Network,was that the generation of totally unique ideas is very complicated and difficult. As we have seen in the movie, the concept of Facebook was not completely unique. This is an idea that was already put into play, with other social networking sites such as MySpace. What Zukerberg did, however, was he took an idea and made it something better than it was. There is a very thin line between stealing an idea and making it something as your own. Basically, Mark took the social networking idea and adapted his own twist on it, making a social empire in the process. In my opinion, this should not be considered theft, especially since Zuckerberg used his own original coding for the site.
Another issue that Mark dealt with was the limitations of communication that advanced technology presents. An example in the movie that stuck with me was when he was blogging about his previous girlfriend. As we learned through the textbook, there are certain limitations that communication through online can have. For one, you don’t get to read facial expressions, which are a huge part of analyzing communication. When Mark spoke poorly about his ex-girlfriend, she got tremendously upset. Mark later claims that he didn’t mean those things, and that it wasn’t meant to be insulting. This is a problem that many people face with an increasingly online world, as face to face communication becomes rarer and rarer.
The last issue I wanted to bring up is the concept of ethnocentrism. As we saw in the opening scene of the movie and throughout the film, Mark is portrayed as being very cocky and demeaning of others. He essentially insults his girlfriend, saying that because of him “she would be able to meet people she wouldn’t normally be able to meet”. Essentially, Mark believes that he is superior to her, saying that the people he is around aren’t usually going to be around her. This can be related to the text example of ethnocentrism, although in this case it’s not about cultures. However he is still displaying the same type of superiority complex.
As we have seen in the movie, communication is still very important in our society, despite the limitations technology places on it. Mark, through his creation and evolution of Facebook, demonstrated the challenges and restrictions technological creators face. Through the movie, we saw him dealing with the challenges of creating new ideas, the limitations of communication, and portraying ethnocentric personality traits.
