Sometimes, just sometimes, I think that the freedom to communicate on such a global scale leads some of us to do things about which we should have thought twice. The mummy Meresamun now has a Facebook page, and I really have to wonder why. On the other hand "she" has over 1000 friends, so someone somewhere must be doing something right. You have to add her as a friend to find out more about her. I am only on Facebook, against all my better instincts, in order to keep up to date with distant friends who have jumped on the site's bandwagon, and I cannot see myself adding a virtual mummy as a friend. But do let me know if she has any fascinating gems of wisdom or news to impart. Enjoy!
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5 comments:
Interestingly negative comment on facebook, Andie
Me? I'm was early adopter and find it to be a useful and interesting tool. Among other things, it's very effective as a way to communicate and syndicate the information I blog about, for instance:
http://networkedblogs.com/p7291562
-Chuck Jones-
I am usually one of the first to jump on technology bandwagons. Even when no-one had really got the idea of the web in the UK in the mid 90s I had a nasty little 14.4k modem connected to my computer to enable me to view the www, to which I was addicted. I then worked in web development for years. In one job I was the product manager for interactive TV and Internet chat applications. I use various chat applications, and email of course, have blogs, write my own websites and generally make a nuisance of myself all over the web. I have a real enthusiasm for all things tech and web.
But there's something about Facebook which seems to eat people alive. The amount of time people spend/waste on it seems peculiar. The whole idea of "social" networking is just not something that I find even remotely attractive. I don't see my friends and colleagues as part of a network, social or otherwise, and I have resisted the idea of an interface which categorizes and organizes them as such. It also seems to bring out the nutter in people. I know someone whose teddy bear has its own Facebook page.
I daresay I'll change my mind. I have two friends leaving the country soon, and both want to manage their contacts through Facebook, so I've been more or less bullied into joining. I haven't bothered to find my way around it yet.
Don't even set me off on the subject of Twitter.
After all that, the comment wasn't so much about Facebook as about the idea of a mummy has its own page. If I put up a website claiming to be the voice of my dead cat my friends would phone the men in white coats. To be perfectly fair, I haven't become a "friend" of Meresamun, so I haven't seen what's on offer. It could all be perfectly wonderful.
It is good to know that there are people like you who have found that Facebook has other uses than just totting up numbers of "friends".
Here's waiting to be lambasted by the entire Facebook community.
Heh, I'm one of Meresamun's friends. It's just nice photos of the mummy, her scans and various events at the Oriental Museum. Facebook is fun if you don't have so many friends that you can't keep up with them all. If you think of it as just a light social adventure, it's nice to learn a little more about people who might not want to post entire journal entries to a blog.
Thanks Joan. I will probably warm to Facebook eventually and I am glad to hear that the Meresamun pages have good content.
The Meresamun phenomenon is amazing. "Her" facebook presence is merely one manifestation of it.
When I remarked on this in mid-April (http://oihistory.blogspot.com/2008/03/oriental-institute-in-news.html [scroll down to "What’s a mummy to do when she needs new tunes"], Google was returning eleven thousand hits on 'Meresamun' - today Google gives 55,200 hits.
-Chuck-
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