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The third board member of Facebook is Jim Breyer. He is a partner in the venture capital firm Accel Partners, who put $12.7m into Facebook in April 2005. On the board of such US giants as Wal-Mart and Marvel Entertainment, he is also a former chairman of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Now these are the people who are really making things happen in America, because they invest in the new young talent, the Zuckerbergs and the like. Facebook's most recent round of funding was led by a company called Greylock Venture Capital, who put in the sum of $27.5m. One of Greylock's senior partners is called Howard Cox, another former chairman of the NVCA, who is also on the board of In-Q-Tel. What's In-Q-Tel? Well, believe it or not (and check out their website), this is the venture-capital wing of the CIA. After 9/11, the US intelligence community became so excited by the possibilities of new technology and the innovations being made in the private sector, that in 1999 they set up their own venture capital fund, In-Q-Tel, which "identifies and partners with companies developing cutting-edge technologies to help deliver these solutions to the Central Intelligence Agency and the broader US Intelligence Community (IC) to further their missions".
The US defence department and the CIA love technology because it makes spying easier. "We need to find new ways to deter new adversaries," defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in 2003. "We need to make the leap into the information age, which is the critical foundation of our transformation efforts." In-Q-Tel's first chairman was Gilman Louie, who served on the board of the NVCA with Breyer. Another key figure in the In-Q-Tel team is Anita K Jones, former director of defence research and engineering for the US department of defence, and - with Breyer - board member of BBN Technologies. When she left the US department of defence, Senator Chuck Robb paid her the following tribute: "She brought the technology and operational military communities together to design detailed plans to sustain US dominance on the battlefield into the next century."
Now even if you don't buy the idea that Facebook is some kind of extension of the American imperialist programme crossed with a massive information-gathering tool, there is no way of denying that as a business, it is pure mega-genius. Some net nerds have suggsted that its $15bn valuation is excessive, but I would argue that if anything that is too modest. Its scale really is dizzying, and the potential for growth is virtually limitless. "We want everyone to be able to use Facebook," says the impersonal voice of Big Brother on the website. I'll bet they do. It is Facebook's enormous potential that led Microsoft to buy 1.6% for $240m. A recent rumour says that Asian investor Lee Ka-Shing, said to be the ninth richest man in the world, has bought 0.4% of Facebook for $60m.
The creators of the site need do very little bar fiddle with the programme. In the main, they simply sit back and watch as millions of Facebook addicts voluntarily upload their ID details, photographs and lists of their favourite consumer objects. Once in receipt of this vast database of human beings, Facebook then simply has to sell the information back to advertisers, or, as Zuckerberg puts it in a recent blog post, "to try to help people share information with their friends about things they do on the web". And indeed, this is precisely what's happening. On November 6 last year, Facebook announced that 12 global brands had climbed on board. They included Coca-Cola, Blockbuster, Verizon, Sony Pictures and Condé Nast. All trained in marketing bullshit of the highest order, their representatives made excited comments along the following lines:
"With Facebook Ads, our brands can become a part of the way users communicate and interact on Facebook," said Carol Kruse, vice president, global interactive marketing, the Coca-Cola Company.
"We view this as an innovative way to cultivate relationships with millions of Facebook users by enabling them to interact with Blockbuster in convenient, relevant and entertaining ways," said Jim Keyes, Blockbuster chairman and CEO. "This is beyond creating advertising impressions. This is about Blockbuster participating in the community of the consumer so that, in return, consumers feel motivated to share the benefits of our brand with their friends."
"Share" is Facebookspeak for "advertise". Sign up to Facebook and you become a free walking, talking advert for Blockbuster or Coke, extolling the virtues of these brands to your friends. We are seeing the commodification of human relationships, the extraction of capitalistic value from friendships.
Now, by comparision with Facebook, newspapers, for example, begin to look hopelessly outdated as a business model. A newspaper sells advertising space to businesses looking to sell stuff to their readers. But the system is far less sophisticated than Facebook for two reasons. One is that newspapers have to put up with the irksome expense of paying journalists to provide the content. Facebook gets its content for free. The other is that Facebook can target advertising with far greater precision than a newspaper. Admit on Facebook that your favourite film is This Is Spinal Tap, and when a Spinal Tap-esque movie comes out, you can be sure that they'll be sending ads your way.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerman (Photo: Paul Sakuma/AP)
It's true that Facebook recently got into hot water with its Beacon advertising programme. Users were notified that one of their friends had made a purchase at certain online shops; 46,000 users felt that this level of advertising was intrusive, and signed a petition called "Facebook! Stop invading my privacy!" to say so. Zuckerberg apologised on his company blog. He has written that they have now changed the system from "opt-out" to "opt-in". But I suspect that this little rebellion about being so ruthlessly commodified will soon be forgotten: after all, there was a national outcry by the civil liberties movement when the idea of a police force was mooted in the UK in the mid 19th century.
Futhermore, have you Facebook users ever actually read the privacy policy? It tells you that you don't have much privacy. Facebook pretends to be about freedom, but isn't it really more like an ideologically motivated virtual totalitarian regime with a population that will very soon exceed the UK's? Thiel and the rest have created their own country, a country of consumers.
Now, you may, like Thiel and the other new masters of the cyberverse, find this social experiment tremendously exciting. Here at last is the Enlightenment state longed for since the Puritans of the 17th century sailed away to North America, a world where everyone is free to express themselves as they please, according to who is watching. National boundaries are a thing of the past and everyone cavorts together in freewheeling virtual space. Nature has been conquered through man's boundless ingenuity. Yes, and you may decide to send genius investor Thiel all your money, and certainly you'll be waiting impatiently for the public flotation of the unstoppable Facebook.
Or you might reflect that you don't really want to be part of this heavily-funded programme to create an arid global virtual republic, where your own self and your relationships with your friends are converted into commodites on sale to giant global brands. You may decide that you don't want to be part of this takeover bid for the world.
For my own part, I am going to retreat from the whole thing, remain as unplugged as possible, and spend the time I save by not going on Facebook doing something useful, such as reading books. Why would I want to waste my time on Facebook when I still haven't read Keats' Endymion? And when there are seeds to be sown in my own back yard? I don't want to retreat from nature, I want to reconnect with it. Damn air-conditioning! And if I want to connect with the people around me, I will revert to an old piece of technology. It's free, it's easy and it delivers a uniquely individual experience in sharing information: it's called talking.
我鄙视Facebook（下）
Facebook董事会的第三个成员是Jim Breyer。作为风险投资公司Accel Partners的合伙人之一，他在2005年4月向Facebook投资了1270万美元。他还是全美风险投资协会的前任主席并曾经担任过沃尔玛、Marvel Entertainment等巨头的董事会成员。这些是真正能够成就伟业的人，因为他们投资了向Zuckerberg这样的天资卓著的年轻人。Facebook的最近一轮融资来自一家叫做Greylock Venture Capital的公司，该公司投入了2750万美元。Greylock的一位资深合伙人Howard Cox，也曾担任过全美风险投资协会的主席，他也是In-Q-Tel的董事会成员。你不知道In-Q-Tel？无论你信不信（你可以到他们的网站上查一下），他们有中情局背景。911事件之后，美国情报界被新技术的出现和由其带来的创新应用所振奋。1999年他们成立了自己的风险投资基金，In-Q-Tel，目的是“发现并投资于能够为美国中情局和情报界开发尖端技术和解决方案，以提高其应对突发事件能力的公司”。
美国国防部和中情局喜欢技术，因为技术使的谍报工作变得更加容易。“我们需要利用新的方式来寻找敌人，”2003年美国国防部长Donald Rumsfeld说到。“我们需要融入信息时代，这是我门转型的关键。”In-Q-Tel的首任主席是Gilman Louie，他与Breyer同是全美风险投资基金会的董事会成员。In-Q-Tel团队的另一位关键人物是Anita K Jones，她曾是美国国防部国防工程研究部门的主管，也曾与Breyer同是BBN Technologies的董事会成员。当她离开美国国防部时，美国参议员Chuck Robb赞扬到：“她将技术和军事活动融和到了一起，使美国有能力统治新世纪的战场。”
即使你不赞同Facebook某种程度上是美帝国主义的巨大信息收集工具，你也不能否认作为一家公司，它实在是太过庞大。有人认为Facebook 150亿美元的估值太高，我确认为这个数字已经很保守了。Facebook的规模非常庞大，而同时其增长的潜力也是无限的。“我们希望每个人都可以用Facebook，”网站的老大哥客观地说。我敢打赌他们会这么做的。微软花费2亿4000万美元购买其1.6%的股份正是冲着它无限的发展潜力去的。最近谣传说亚洲投资人、全球第九大富豪李嘉诚花费6000万美元购买了Facebook 0.4%的股份。
网站的创建者几乎不需要做什么。他们只需要看着上百万的Facebook爱好者自愿公开他们的身份信息、上传照片、列出他们喜欢的东西。一旦他们得到了这个庞大的用户信息数据库，Facebook回头就卖给广告主，或者像Zuckerberg在一篇文章里说到的：“帮助人们在其朋友之间共享信息”。而这些恰好都是事实。去年11月6日，Facebook宣布他们与12个国际品牌建立了合作关系，包括可口可乐、Blockbuster、Verizon、索尼电影和Condé Nast。这些公司的代表们大放厥词，兴奋地评论到：
“借助Facebook广告，我们的品牌可以成为用户在Facebook上谈论的一部分，”可口可乐的全球营销副总裁Carol Kruse说到。
“我们将此视为一种培养客户关系的创新方式，让Facebook的几百万用户以一种舒适、愉快和高度相关的方式与Blockbuster形成互动，”Blogckbuster的主席兼CEO Jim Keyes说到。“这种方式要远胜于单纯的广告。这是Blockbuster参与用户交流的方式，而同时用户也会有和朋友分享我们的品牌的动力。”
Facebook用“分享”来形容“广告”。注册成为Facebook用户，你就成为Blockbuster或者可口可乐的活的广告牌，向你的朋友传播这些品牌的优势。在这里，我们看到了人际关系的转变，从朋友关系中获取收益的过程。
现在，相对于Facebook，报纸这样的媒体已经成为过时的商业模式。报纸将广告位卖给那些希望将商品卖给读者的企业。这个过程比Facebook要弱智多了，原因有二：一是报纸需要为记者们写的文章支付大量的报酬，而Facebook的内容是免费获取的；二是Facebook在定位目标客户方面比报纸精确多了。你在Facebook上写了你喜欢的电影是《摇滚万岁》，当有新的类似电影上映时，你铁定会收到他们的广告的。
Facebook最近因为其Beacon广告计划而陷入了麻烦。当自己的朋友在某个在线商店买了什么东西，自己会收到提醒。46000名用户认为这种形式的广告打扰了他们，并联名控诉“Facebook！不要侵犯我的隐私！”Zuckerberg在公司的博客上道了歉。他写到他们已经将该系统由“默认”变为“可选”。但是，我怀疑这个因为功能调整而引发的抗议很快就会被遗忘：19世纪中叶英国发生的因为建立全职警察部队而导致的全国性抗议，不是也很快就被人们忘记了吗？
另外，Facebook用户真正阅读过那些隐私条款吗？这些条款告诉你，你并没有多少隐私可言。Facebook表现得好像很自由，但它看起来是不是更像一个人口即将超过英国的，由意识形态驱动的极权主义政权呢？Thiel和其他人创建了自己的国家，由消费者组成的国家。
现在，你可能像Thiel和其他Cyberverse的成员一样，觉得这种社会性的试验是非常令人兴奋的。这起码是清教徒在17世纪远航北美之后最大的启蒙运动，清教徒们建立了一个可以按照自己的喜好随意表达自己的国度。国界线已经成为了过去时，人们在这个虚拟世界里随心所欲。这只是Thiel这种人的看法。是的，你可能决定把自己所有的钱都交给天才投资人Thiel，然后焦急地等待Facebook浮出水面。
也有可能你觉得并非真正想成为这个大量集聚资金的计划的一部分，去创造一个全球的虚拟共和国，在这里你自己和你的朋友关系将转化为商业价值，出售给那些国际巨头们。
就我个人而言，我将远离这些事情，保持清醒，把本来花在Facebook上的时间用在更加有意义的事情上，例如读书。为什么在还没有读过Keat的《Endymion》，或者我后院的花种还没种好的情况下，我要把时间浪费在Facebook上呢？我不想远离自然，我想重新融入自然。见鬼的空调！并且如果我想与周围的人交流，我将使用一种古老的技术。它免费，简单易用，而且在分享信息方面有与众不同的体验：这种技术叫做交谈。
注：本文由刘佳和我共同翻译完成，感谢雷大在翻译过程中指点迷津。
