Could Facebook become its own nation?

I recently read an article in the Economist that tried to compare Facebook to a sovereign government. It says that Facebook, if it were considered a nation, would have the third-largest population in the world, behind only India and China. After the population comparison though, the similarities begin to dissipate. Facebook has no police force, no actual physical land to defend, no rights for citizens, and so on. But it’s an interesting idea nonetheless.

There have been arguments in the past that as the future moves on, people will no longer-be governed by contemporary governments, but rather by multi-national corporations. These corporations will become so vast and so powerful, that they essentially will control what governments say, creating their own set of preferences in place of what the government already has. Let's take Google and China for example. If Google was able to influence enough change in China in order to get China to minimize their censorship, then one could say that Google has larger influence over Chinese government than China themselves. This would only be in one particular aspect of governmental rule, but the fact of the situation still remains the same. Of course, this is a far way away, but there are still other circumstances in which this could be applied.

Let’s get back to Facebook. The Economist article also mentions a discussion that British Prime Minister David Cameron and Mark Zuckerberg recently had (check it out here). Recently-appointed Cameron wanted to create more transparency and more citizenry participation into his new government, and he was consulting with Zuckerberg on how Facebook can contribute to this. The potential implications could be massive. What if voting no longer took place in the polls, but on Facebook itself? What if you could have real-time discussions, with people on the other side of the country, as people vote? This is of course years away but Facebook is one of the few available platforms in which such wide-ranging discussion could realistically occur and actually make an impact.

And this wouldn’t be this first time that Facebook has played a role in politics. After all, Facebook, among with the rest of it’s social networking brethren, was one of the main reasons that Obama became elected. Without Facebook as a platform to unite a major foundation of Obama supporters, it would have been interesting to see if Obama would have been able to create the success that he did.

There is one major advantage that Facebook, Google, and other multi-nationals have: how do you defend against them? If any of these corporations get that big, then how can a sovereign nation defend their agenda from the overpowering influence of these corporations? They could try to block them, only enraging the public, human right’s activists, and a plethora of other people and organizations. There isn’t really an adequate “defense”, meaning that as Facebook gets bigger and bigger, so does it’s influence over government. So although Facebook might never become a sovereign nation, it, for all intents and purposes, could have more power than one.

The Next Emerging Market: China's Porn Industry

Ok, so I realize that this might come off as a joke, but I'm actually slightly serious about this. There was a recent article that I came across that said that some internet porn sites have started to become accessible in China. The article itself is pretty funny, with people mentioning that they happened to "stumble" across the sites, and that they surely weren't users or anything. There was even "a 29-year-old employee at a state-owned logistics company who did not want to be identified because he surfs for porn on business trips." How dare him!! But really, what does this actually mean for China? Most stats for the porn industry are rather vague, there are some interesting one that could be an indicator:

· According to Nielsen net ratings, more than a quarter of Internet users accessed an adult Web site in January 2010.

· America's porn industry is worth an estimated $14 billion.

· 72% of porn viewers are men (I so would have thought this was higher).

· There are about 300 million internet users in China, with a population of 1.3 billion, 670 million of which are male.

If China starts incrementally allowing access to porn sites, this could have a great financial, as well as cultural effect on China. First, the financial impact seems more or less obvious. A lot of people + a lot of porn = a lot of money (yes, American education is truly spectacular). The cultural effects are less obvious. The first question that comes to mind is this: If restrictions are reduced on porn, then could they be reduced on other things as well? Could this lead to a potential change in the Chinese government's monitoring of the internet? If so, the human right's implications are momentous. The availability of information, whether its political, economical, or whatever else, could potentially lead to a different society altogether. It could open up a complete new avenue for bloggers, news sites, evangelists, etc, which in turn would also lead to greater access for marketers, advertisers, businesses, and so on. This could also lead to greater opportunities with international organizations. For example, imagine if Google didn't have to worry about censorship issues. This would, of course, take some time to fully develop, but the impact is still clear.

As this story develops, it will be interesting to see if this is a one-time occurrence, or if this will lead to a changing of the tide for China. After all, as one individual commented in the original article, "The more they restrict something, the more people pay attention." And if China feels that the internet is too open anyway and that restriction just isn't working, then who knows what could happen.

What do you want to be when you grow up?

Earlier today, I was spending some time with my 6-year old niece, when an interesting thought came across my mind. I asked her what she wanted to be when she grows up, and her eyes beamed, a huge smile filled her face, and she shouted - "Makeup artist!" "Aaaahh yes, makeup artist, of course!" was the thought that filled my mind. And then I remembered a moment in first grade when I was asked to write about the same question. My answer was, with as much enthusiasm as my little niece, "professional football player!". Later, I wanted to be a doctor. Then a lawyer. Then I wanted to get in real estate. Then I wanted to be a sports agent. Then a recruiter. And well, now, I want to be an economist. Now that I think about it, I wonder how many times I've actually been asked that question - it's definitely way too many to count.

In society, especially American society, people are constantly pushed to look for the future. What do you want to do? Why? How will you get there? Will it be worth it when you get there? Are you sure when you get there, that that's really where you want to be? Starting in Kindergarten and asked every step of the way thereafter, these questions are always swarming the thoughts of growing minds. For some people, they pick a direction early in life and develop their entire life around that direction. For others, they don't decide until later in life, and some, maybe never at all. And of course, it's never solely a personal decision. It's a decision and a thought process that is influenced by hundreds of different outside sources - friends, family, tv, internet, etc.

Personally, I think Steve Jobs said it best in his Stanford graduation speech, which you can see here. Jobs speaks about how earlier in his life he was unsure of where he wanted to go or what he wanted to do - he hadn't picked his direction yet. He dabbled in this, including trying acid and living on an ashram in India, and tried out that, but none of it seemed to fit. In his speech, he says how looking back on his life, the path that he created for himself all seems to makes sense, but when he was younger, he had no idea the path that would form. Rather than create a plan, follow that plan, and execute that plan, which is what is told to millions of college graduates nationwide, he says to connect the dots looking backward. To, essentially, do what you want to do now, and then eventually everything will fall in to place.

So as many of my recent college graduates, myself included, continue to debate their futures, it's important to remember that as valuable as thinking about the future may be, it's more important to not lose focus on what you're doing now. And, lastly, as important as some might say it is to create a plan and follow that plan, I say do what Emerson said -

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

1 year blogging hiatus

Wow. It's been quite a while since I wrote a post on this blog. In fact, a lot has happened since my last post May 28, 2009. First, I graduated college - Woohoo! I think spent a month lying around my parent's house contemplating life and my future. I decided that the only rational thing to do was to continue that contemplating on the other side of the world in Australia, where I spent a month traveling from Sydney up the coast to Brisbane. Unfortunately, or fortunately, at this point I still had no idea as to where my future was headed, but I did have a slightly clearer picture than before. I knew that I wanted to go and teach abroad. There were many reasons for this, but the bottom line was that it was something that I am very interested in, it was something that I had the time and the availability to do, and lastly, it was something that financially was both reliable and rewarding. So, with that in mind, I embarked on an 8-month teaching English in Thailand adventure - which I jumped to a different blog to document teachinginthailand.tumblr.com. After two months of semi-violent protests, 8 months of nocturnal parties, and hours of pondering later (o, and actually teaching), I finally arrived back in the US.

And that's that - a year in a paragraph. What next? Well, another month at home spending time with the family, then off to continue my education (definitely nothing to do with pushing off the real world). I do want to continue writing about Generation Y and careers, but I also want to expand this blog and additionally being to discuss larger economic and political issues as well. Ideally, the point will come when these two seemingly disparate ideas are able to merge together, but until that point, it's good to be back!