Not Your Average Book

People weren't particularly interested in seeing me, they were interesting in seeing each other. They came to see who came.
- Andy Warhol

The Social Network is a good movie for quite a few reasons. David Fincher took public court documents surrounding the legal battles of Facebook and strategically sprinkled them in a fictional dramatization of its founding. The film in general was well made with a great story that holds attention well throughout the movie. Jesse Eisenberg does an amazing job of portraying Mark Zuckerberg as the anti-hero of the movie for as long as necessary. Zuckerberg is portrayed to be a speaking motherboard but behind all the Silicon is a person passionate about their creation. He is somebody who wanted ownership of (whether new and digital or old and traditional) a social phenomena and he pursued it, just without finesse.

What intrigued me and made this film memorable across the ages were the messages throughout the movie. One scene stands out for me in particular. After Saverin freezes the bank accounts, Zuckerberg yells over the phone to him (I'm paraphrasing here) "people can't get on facebook and if they don't get on facebook their friends won't go on facebook because people only want to go on because their friends are on"

This line just basically sums up a key point Fincher was trying to make: we're a generation that wants to be everyone else is. The term "individual" is one taken lightly and whose definition has grown vaguer over the years (which are like eons in the normal time frame). It is becoming clearer that we are more prominently defining our actions and who we are by the people we are surrounded by. It seems that what Darwin did for finches – looking at their evolution from a biological perspective – Zuckerberg has done a social experience. We are a series of algorithms and PHP code. Will only the strong survive? Will only the smart survive? What is the quality of these ties and will they be strong? Malcolm Gladwell makes a decent argument in his latest article but it's written from someone who isn't really from within our generation. There are plenty more questions that we need to ask ourselves.

Another quote from the movie that sticks out to me was said in reference to Facebook's infancy:

"You don't even know what the thing is yet. How big it can get, how far it can go."

I interpret this line to apply to our generation. We're not our parents' children. We are a generation that is addicted to the digital sphere. Our sense of independence is far from its true definition. We are the lab mice of the World Wide Web constantly being tested, fad by fad, meme by meme, username by username. We are the cattle ranging on infinite domains. We still have yet to see how big we are, will we or are we going to make it big using these tools that have been provided for us (ultimately proving Gladwell wrong – or maybe we're part of a bigger hierarchy than he imagined). How far can we as a generation go?

The Social Network displays a portrait of our generation – a microcosm of the state of our laptops. And that's what makes a piece of art great: when it accurately and elegantly acts a mirror for the people to see themselves in. The Social Network was as much a snapshot about a generation than it was a story about a website and a business going through various stages that everyone goes through.

It's a beautiful and ugly mess of technology, relationships and science put together. Although we have many questions to answer regarding our future and where we're headed, one thing we cannot deny is that Zuckerberg found us. He discovered that we were different and that there was something grand and simultaneously pathetic about us. Every scientist who discovers something reserves the right to name it. I'm sure Zuckerberg wouldn't object to us as The Facebook Generation.