Tom Hodgkinson is an English writer and thinker, perhaps best known as the long-standing editor of the Idler magazine. Tom has been one of Facebook's most stringent critics since it launched five years ago and began to gradually infiltrate our daily lives and most personal friendships, both old and new.
As this week marks the fifth birthday of Mark Zuckerberg's social network, TechRadar decided to speak to Tom to find out more about his thoughts on the Facebook phenomenon.
TechRadar: How will you be 'celebrating' the fifth anniversary of Facebook?
Tom Hodgkinson: I can´t conceive of an event less worth celebrating.
You're a vehement critic of Facebook, but isn't it a great tool for idlers to waste their time (and their bosses' time!)?
If you are stuck in a boring job then I can see that it is fun. Clearly people enjoy it. I just don´t think that they realise it is simply an advertising scam that seeks to make huge profits out of friendship.
You've been critical of Peter Thiel [an investor in Facebook], why is that?
Peter Thiel is a fascinating businessman from California. He runs a hedge fund and makes giant sums of money. He was a partner in PayPal and made a pile when he sold out. He was the first investor in Facebook. He is an intellectual libertarian futurologist who believes that technology will save the world. He sees human progress as a gradual escape from the restrictions of nature. He is involved in the Singularity project, which thinks that we can harness technology to live forever, and which sounds to me like the biggest pile of hokum in the known galaxy.
I just think that it´s important with these things to find out where the money is coming from. That will determine its nature. And Facebook has a clear ideology behind it. It is part of the American project. With 150 million users, Thiel is creating a global community outside of national boundaries.
You've been similarly critical of the CIA's involvement with Facebook, what can you tell us about that?
You notice that there are various people on the boards of the venture capital companies that allow things like Facebook to grow who are also on the board of the CIA's own venture capital wing (In-Q-Tel).
The defence industry has always been very interested in the uses of technology for warfare and for spying. With Facebook, they have access to a vast database of information. What is interesting is that various people in the US Defence department had proposed a computerised database of all American citizens. The idea was rejected on the grounds of infringement of civil liberty. But with Facebook, the commercial world has been able to achieve something of equal if not bigger scale with no trouble at all because people simply volunteered all their information for free.
Remember also that Facebook is now in control of a marketing database beyond the dreams of avarice, and they are actively exploring how to make huge sums of money out of it right now.
What are your specific qualms with Facebook's 'Privacy Policy'?
These are the bandits of the high seas, stealing information from us and selling it on at a huge mark-up. The privacy policy says that Facebook owns all the information that you have given it, and that it will give that information up if required to do so by law.
Can you say more about the 'neoconservative libertarianism' that you feel is behind Facebook and a number of other tech developments. For example, how does Facebook relate to the recent news of Google and Nasa backing 'The Singularity University'?
