Facebook Society Losing Ourselves in Sharing Ourselves by Roberto Simanowski translated by Susan H.Gillespie

Facebook Society Losing Ourselves in Sharing Ourselves by Roberto Simanowski translated by Susan H.Gillespie is an illuminating, philosophical but very accessible book regarding  great thematic: where do we go thanks to social medias?
In the past there was reading (personally I continue to prefer this dimension) and reading was good. Very good.When we read we create solid culture, we are absorbed in the story, we remember it because there are no distractions, and we enter magically in another world. We are lost in reading and later, that words, that characters, impressed in that book we read will remain with us, consciously or unconsciously for the rest of our existence.

Social medias and Facebook in particular with its own society where transparency and where socialization should be the most important factor, eradicated other concepts in the society.
That after all we should share with everyone our existence, that maybe we should "sell" it,  metaphorically and non, with other people and..companies.
I was and I still think that the biggest problem of FB is privacy.
I am also on MySpace and the big difference between these two platforms is that MySpace keeps (no sure if it does it anymore) private all messages written to a friend.
Facebook, differently, thinks that we should share ourselves with everyone.
We should search for everyone. Our old schoolmates never seen from an age and who knows which are their thoughts now, what kind of life they built; we should add our co-workers, with sometimes dangerous results, people we don't know, because measuring with our moral values, maybe we think that everyone is as good as we are but...

This book starts from the assumptions that this one is becoming a life not just lived virtually but without a proper connection with reality, although people don't have this perception; as adds the author we are losing an attitude in the past common: concentrated reading and it means that we will become more poor regarding complex thinking that it is one of the pillars, one of the bases of the society.

Delegating our existences to a social media and what that social media thinks of us, means a big problematic.

Without to count,  there is mental dispersion, thanks to social medias also common friendship are altered or it is more difficult to establish a healthy friendship because of the use of social medias.  It's a different world this one created by social medias.

The author then remembers the role of imagines, taken without, in most cases, living the moment, living the present. It's like if temporally we wouldn't be there for living the moment but for let live that one at our smart phone and then for sharing it on Facebook, the biggest archive of our existence.

People are becoming narcissist, they feel a sort of importance for being in a social media, protagonists of their own existences; feeling this sensation of importance is the main cause of something else: to lose the best that there is in life: memories, moments to live with intensity. Without smart phone and Facebook.

Descartes was famous for a phrase: "Cogito Ergo Sum" in our society, adds the author it became: "I narrate, therefore I am" because what it is done realistically it is sometimes a very detailed description of the existence of the person with the paradoxical problems created by it.Not only: the existence is constantly archived. People are archived. Virtual archives.

Solitude increases in a condition where for existing and for being in this world and big virtual stage, the most important thing to do is to share, or to post.

I didn't know why Mark Zuckenberg thought once of creating a social media like Facebook:the author explains it.  Refused by some exclusive Harvard's clubs he thought that it would have been wonderful to create an inclusive place where everyone could tell his/her life-story and where everyone could share pictures and important moments of his/her existence.

Thanka to this frustration he created a big success.

This book reminds us that we mustn't lose ourselves. We are human beings, with a brain and with a possibility: the one of disconnecting the dependence from FB, sharing less and living more.

Very readable book, I am sure that you will find it very captivating and absolutely informative.
I just can tell you that I read it in a few hours.

Highly recommended.

I thank Columbia University Press for the physical copy of this book.

Anna Maria Polidori