I: Good morning
La Jornada Semanal, cultural and literary supplement of the national daily, titled "Five years after the end of the world," the latest edition of December 1995. At that time, devoted 8 pages to the publication of stories by young authors who wrote about the year 2000 from perspectives ranging from the apocalyptic to the playful. Naief Yehya, a pioneer in Mexico of network analysis, wrote a story for the occasion in which the protagonist's wife, when he died, became a website. At that time web sites were a rarity in Mexico, and barely beginning to glimpse its commercial and social potential, so the literary proposal of Yehya sounded extravagant that no longer exist on the vital plane, one line of code become programmed to continue living in the network. Today, a decade after the end of the world was not, the literature has come true. The mysterious words today are: death in times of the network.
II: Still with us
A year ago, I deeply regretted the loss of a former student who was very fond of and with whom I shared tablados several times by both music and theater. This girl was very talented, and dedicated himself successfully to the stage and towards the end of his life, filmmaking. He studied in Mexico City when he suffered an accident that left him brain dead. Days later he said goodbye.
Not long before we were reunited via Facebook, and by this means is that I was hearing about his adventures in Mexico City and their artistic achievements. In the days following his death, his Facebook profile was filled with messages from friends and family, in which said goodbye to him, expressing affection, and regretted his departure. Although I had never seen anything like that, did not seem so strange that event, given the changes that are represented in our daily communication social networks. What surprised me was that spent the weeks and months, and friends followed him, leaving messages, but not in mourning tone, but like "today we see in the movies at 6:00, is a very good movie" or "see you in the party to shoot, tomorrow at 9 : 00. "
As if he were alive, friends continued to write, send messages of Merry Christmas, a happy birthday, see you in the evening, thanks for the strength you give me. To date I still write, and several times a week someone goes through the wall to leave a message. In your profile cyberspace, there are still plenty of life.
IV: necropolitics
The April 17, 2007 a student of Polytechnic Virginia closed with a chain outside a classroom block, and began to shoot at everything that moved. Reached with their bullets to 62 students, of whom 34 would die, and then shot himself. The killing shocked the United States, and resonated throughout the world. That night, George Bush gave a message of sympathy that included the peculiarity that for the first time a president of this country spoke of blogs, and how young people relate to the network. Friends and relatives of the deceased students began to leave messages on their Facebook profiles, and soon became a mass phenomenon that was previously unknown: the social networking accounts that become a memorial to the departed.
Facebook At that time was not quite prepared to deal with these situations. Should he allow the accounts were active from the dead? Should I remove them? There are privacy considerations involved. What, for example, if, in the midst of the messages of sympathy or affection, someone not very edifying reveal things about the deceased, or put to publicly insult his memory accounts receivable? At the time Facebook was three years old, and only a few months of being open to the public (before membership was exclusively preparatoriana university), the company aimed at a younger audience and did not consider that users would eventually begin to die, no defined strategies in this regard. For now, the policy was that if there was clear evidence that a user had died (by notice of relatives and verification of the documents), the profile was deleted.
However, many called for the continuation of the profiles of the students killed at Virginia Tech to leave messages of condolence on them, and Facebook had to begin to reconsider their policies. Currently, if a user is notified that dies and there is clear evidence of this, the system offers to relatives or friends two options: delete the profile, or keep it as a memorial blocking certain sections and limiting the use of your account (you can not add new friends, for example). Recently added the instruction not to list the name in searches, or use it to offer services of social interaction, the latter from complaints from users receiving the system alive invitations to "reconnect" with people who killed through algorithms had identified as Facebook users with little or no activity on their accounts.
IV: The machine
This is as Macondo in his beginnings, when "the world was so recent that many things lacked names, and had to bring them to mention finger. " Facebook is so recent that have not yet adjusted to the needs of its users.
One of every 14 inhabitants of the planet has a Facebook account. Currently, the population sector over 65 years is the most rapidly adopting this network, tripling its number of hits per month of May 2009 to May 2010. There are 350 000 users per employee of this online community, making it impossible to have a direct monitoring of what happens, especially to realize who are dying. As solutions, Facebook sees more specialized logarithms (eg, user profiles identifying dead from words and key phrases left on the walls) that could become operational in the coming months.
Facebook functionality has changed the world in an extremely short period of time, and has become a sort of autobiographical container in which people document their relationships, interests, and everyday life through photographs, videos , notes, thoughts, pokes, likes, and a number of virtual devices that determine the new communication between friends. Just as Facebook has managed to become an inescapable part of modern life, must adapt and grow to also offer a decent, humane and socially responsible for friends and relatives of users who are dying. Es la evolución que nos tocará presenciar y en la que, eventualmente, de manera inevitable, habremos de participar.
VI: Nican mopohua, ome.
Aquí inicia la segunda temporada de la Columna Lítica, por el momento a través de la página web de la Secretaría de Administración del Estado de Colima (very unlikely but welcoming forum) y a través de Facebook (faltaba más). Estaremos leyéndonos aquí cada tanto, por lo pronto, y ya iremos viendo. En la red hay estas y otras letras: www.ErnestoCortes.com. Los leo: Ernesto@CuerdaCueroyCanto.com. En Twitter: @ernestocortes.
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