Zadie Smith:

We were going to live online. It was going to be extraordinary. Yet what kind of living is this? I fear I am becoming nostalgic. I am dreaming of a Web that caters to a kind of person who no longer exists. A private person, a person who is a mystery, to the world and -- which is more important -- to herself.

Perhaps Generation Facebook have built their virtual mansions in good faith, in order to house the People 2.0 they genuinely are, and if I feel uncomfortable within them it is because I am stuck at Person 1.0. Then again, the more time I spend with the tail end of Generation Facebook the more convinced I become that some of the software currently shaping their generation is unworthy of them. They are more interesting than it is. They deserve better.

Those of us who turn in disgust from what we consider an overinflated liberal-bourgeois sense of self should be careful what we wish for: our denuded networked selves don't look more free, they just look more owned.

Monica J. Harris:

As in any social trap, when everybody acts in their self-interest, a negative collective outcome ensues. I don't want to be part of the problem any more.

Virginia Postrel:

We can certainly survive without another pair of shoes, a beach vacation, or an iPad. We just imagine we'd be happier with them. Sometimes we are. But even the most successful purchases rarely live up to our daydreams, which edit out all the flaws and aggravations. At the very least, we get used to what we have. The thrill of novelty wears off, and we start dreaming of something else.

But even the most seemingly materialistic daydreams -- the transformed life we imagine in a new dress, a new car, a new house -- allow us to rise above the here and now, projecting ourselves into an idealized future. In the process, we learn truths about who we are, what we desire, and who we might become. Those things may matter only to our minds, but that doesn't make them any less valuable or any less real.

Roger Scruton:

There is a strong argument to be made that the Facebook experience, which has attracted millions of people from all around the world, is an antidote to shyness, a way in which people otherwise cripplingly intimidated by the venture outwards into society are able to overcome their disability and enjoy the web of affectionate relationships on which so much of our happiness depends. But there is an equally strong argument that the Facebook experience, to the extent that it is supplanting the physical realm of human relationships, hypostatizes shyness, retains its principal features, while substituting an ersatz kind of affection for the real affection that shyness fears. For by placing a screen between yourself and the friend, while retaining ultimate control over what appears on that screen, you also hide from the real encounter -- denying the other the power and the freedom to challenge you in your deeper nature and to call on you here and now to take responsibility for yourself and for him.

Ali Dhux:

A man tries hard to help you find your lost camels.
He works more tirelessly than even you,
But in truth he does not want you to find them, ever.