[seqfan] Re: Pictures taken at the AMS/MAA meeting in San Francisco

[Marc LeBrun]

A bit of off-road ranting; please delete freely and often...

 >=Jaap Spies
 > Anyway maybe I should make this step.

Perhaps.  See below.  Easy picture sharing and habitual texting are 
the gateway drugs to full-blown social networking.

If you decide to go for it, be sure to always practice "safe text", 
and don't forget to set your profile options to as comfortable a 
privacy level as you can secure.  You may want to filter being 
spammed whenever someone, say, edits the OEIS wiki.

 > There is a Sage facebook also.

Off-brands are just methadone to social networking.  Why settle 
getting stuck with anything "Liter" than the real black tar?

 > Let's face(book) that times are changing!

Indeed.  My kids, aged 18..25, are in what I call "the Facebook 
generation".  They report interesting effects these media have had on 
their cohort.  For example they are much more self-conscious in (now 
endemic) snapshots, since their images get posted in this public 
reputation-impacting way.  They also report much more larger-scale 
coordination and synchronizing of what traditionally have been 
spontaneous intimate activities (eg going to a movie now involves 
O(n^2) text message exchanges, with n growing).  Nor are they naive; 
they accept that the entities supporting these free services do so in 
order to more effectively sell them goods, memes and other 
stuff.  Perhaps indeed civilization ends not with a bang, but with a tweet.

Meanwhile one still strives to maintain the highest standards of 
curmudgeonry, but these tides sure do riseth as the thresholds 
lowereth.  My Facebook Profile's "Favorite Quote":

   "For I see not what there is desirable in public esteem, were I 
able to acquire and maintain it.
    It would perhaps increase my acquaintance, the thing which I 
chiefly study to decline."
      --Sir Isaac Newton, 1669

Anyway, enjoy the pixels!