FACEBOOK AS A SKY

When you look at the sky overhead you look at stars, star clusters, nebulae, galaxies etc but can scarcely tell one from another. They all intermingle – some very large but very far, others shining in the vicinity. Friends and strangers on the Facebook bear an uncanny resemblance to this.

Then there are the constellations that don’t exist except as an illusion from your relative position in the universe at a given point of time. FB pages that we see change depending upon who you are, in relation to whom, and when. Such a page doesn’t exist in reality. It is constructed for you virtually – and momentarily.

There are stars that we see shining bright. But they may well have died out years, indeed, thousands of years, ago. They being very, very far from us, the last light they emitted before dying out is yet to reach us. We continue to see them from our relative position. If we were on a planet in the system near them we would have seen them burst out in supernovae probably a long time ago and would find a gaping hole at that place now. Or huge Stardust!

On FB decorated, large profiles may well belong to members who have ceased to be active. You keep tagging them but they have no idea you called. They live only in your profile and on your Friend’s List.

You Like or not your friends stay there on the FB. So do the stars. You come back to FB page a few hours later, and find the page entirely changed. So does the sky. Facebook is quite a sky. Under the roof.