Zadie Smith's essay "Generation Why?" in The New York Review of Books explores how online platforms like Facebook reduce human identity to simple data. It reviews two pieces: "The Social Network," a film directed by David Fincher about Facebook's inception, and "You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto," a book by Jaron Lanier critical of web 2.0 culture. Smith discusses her own disconnect from the Facebook generation, despite being close in age to its founder.
RT @pkedrosky: NYRoB: Shouldn’t we struggle against Facebook? Everything in it is reduced to the size of its founder.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/25/generation-why/?pagination=false