Is there life after facebook? the cyber gulag revisited and debate reloaded

Abstract

Misled by a quick triumphalism of the social media, the international news agencies have confused the two: revolt and revolution. The past episodes of unrest started as a social, not a political, public revolt. Through the pain of sobriety, the protesters are learning that neither globalisation nor the McFB way of life is a shortcut to development; that free trade is not a virtue, but an instrument; that liberalism is not a state of mind but a well-doctrinated ideology; and, finally, that the social media networks are only a communication tool, not a replacement for independent critical thinking or for the collapsed cross-generational contract. Londoners, Greeks and New Yorkers are experiencing the same thing. How does the 'Arab Spring' correlate with the European Euro-frost, and with American Occupy Wall Street unrest? For almost ten years now, the youth in Europe has been repeatedly sending us a powerful message about the perceived collapse of the social contract. The cross-generational contract should be neither neglected nor built on the over-consumerist, disheartened and egotistic McFB way of life. Equally alienating and dangerously inflammatory is the collision of the entering youth generation (if/when deprived of the opportunity and handed over a lame hope) - through a religious or political radicalisation. In this world spanning Kantian hopes and Hobbesian fears, thus, the final question is: Is there life after FB? If so, how can we register our future claims?