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I'm Majoring in Facebook, How About You?

There have been discussions about whether it matters whether you go to a high-profile college. I don't think it does. But the issue is highlighted in this CNN story on a class being offered at Stanford. The University Business eNewsletter (linking to this bit) questions whether the program is worth the $2500. This question is particularly relevant in light of posts like this one from Tony Hirst describing how to make Facebook applications, or of programs like Dapper, which do it for you. In fact, I had half an hour before my meeting this morning and I created an OLDaily facebook app that you can actually use inside your own Facebook account. $2500 tuition? Or a few blog posts. Your call. Lindsay Blakely, CNN, October 12, 2007. [Link] [Tags: , , , ] [Previous][Next]

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Re: I'm Majoring in Facebook

George Roberts, October 13, 2007

Further to this and to other recent comments about Microsoft's possible investment in Facebook.
http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=41816
http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=41850

In a podcast lecture from UC Berkley: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/course_details.php?seriesid=1906978491 "Introduction to the human", Greg Niemeyer, cited this article:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10456534
and asserted there was a chain of connections linking FaceBook with the CIA and DARPA's discredited Office of Information Awareness (OIA).

Mad conspiracy theory? http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekl

Anita Jones, James Breyer and Peter Thiel may be the glue that holds it together: http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=2007050415441157.

Anita Jones was head of R&D for the US Dept of Defence at the time that the Information Awareness Office (http://infowar.net/tia/www.darpa.mil/iao/) was being established.

Accel http://www.accel.com/ invested $13 million in Facebook (http://www.accel.com/news/news_one_up.php?news_id=129). Note who is on the committee deciding the "grants": Breyer and Thiel; here's Breyer: http://www.accel.com/people/bio.php?person_id=4&group_id=1
(btw, this is not me! http://www.accel-kkr.com/team/bio.cfm?Id=41)

BBN, http://www.bbn.com/ What do they do? http://www.bbn.com/solutions_and_technologies/ And, check out the Board: http://www.bbn.com/about/board_of_directors/. There's Breyer and Jones.

In-q-tel? http://www.inqtel.org/ now it gets interesting. Jones is on the board. (http://www.inqtel.org/team/bot.html) of the CIA's investment arm after serving as Head of R&D for the Defence Dept. In-q-tel is a "government contractor operating as an independent nonprofit corporation, In-Q-Tel receives regular oversight from the CIA, which keeps Congress informed of the company's activities." I feel so reassured.

Look at this:
http://www.inqtel.org/invest/bbn.html BBN is one of In-q-tel's big investments. They are not a technology start-up, they've been a very big information technology contractor to the government for years. Indeed they built ARPAET many years ago.

Peter Thiel: we met him briefly on the group with Breyer, managing FaceBook's platform development "grants". See him here (http://www.independent.org/aboutus/person_detail.asp?id=456). Note his literary endeavours: http://www.independent.org/store/book_detail.asp?bookID=38. Thiel founded PayPal. He believes money should be issued privately and commerce transacted without interference (or democratic oversight?) from states (http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail380.html). So what else interests Thiel? The "singularity" http://sss.stanford.edu/overview/whatisthesingularity/. Here's his bio, again http://sss.stanford.edu/speakers/thiel/ With Nick Bostrom http://sss.stanford.edu/speakers/bostrom/ Where have we heard that name before?
http://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk/ and http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/index/:
the current manifestation of the eugenics movement (but that's a digression).

Thiel's colleague Rod Martin founded Vanguard Political Action Committee (Vanguard PAC) and Thiel served on the board of advisers of the PAC: "Founded by some of Silicon Valley's most successful conservatives, TheVanguard.Org is here to take the battle to the enemy." http://valleywag.com/tech/jerome-corsi/two-degrees-of-peter-thiel-232180.php http://valleywag.com/tech/clans/peter-thiels-misfits-230588.php Rod Martin, Head of the Vanguard and Co-founder, with Pete, of PayPal co-authored this with Jeb Bush: Thank You, President Bush: Reflections on the War on Terror, Defense of the Family, and Revival of the Economy (find it on Amazon if you can be bothered).

Breyer and Jones are on the Boards of BBN. Breyer and Jones headed the American Venture Capital Association. Breyer and Theil are on the FaceBook board.

Charlene Croft wonders if she is sounding like a "conspiraloon" http://charlenecroft.wordpress.com/2007/08/23/facebooks-new-advertising-strategy/;

need more? http://simulacram.vox.com/library/post/facebook-a-cia-front.html; http://qwstnevrythg.blog-city.com/was_facebook_started_by_the_cia.htm

So, who is majoring in FaceBook? Makes Microsoft's potential investment seem a trivial issue? Or is this just me with my tin-foil hat screwed on too tight?

George [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

Re: I'm Majoring in Facebook

libertariangirl, March 2, 2008

Come on now, George. The above diatribe takes away from the issue at hand (Facebook and privacy). To imply that Nick Bostrom is a leader in the "modern eugenics movement" is patently absurd-- you did give me my laugh for the day, thank you for that. You clearly don't know the first thing about transhumanism, the goal of which is simply improving humans, all humans, not just picking and choosing certain ones to procreate (usually based on race or other such factors) as a eugenist would.

Peter Thiel is a libertarian, which is the opposite of a neocon. He has endorsed Ron Paul, who gave the great speech in Congress "Neo-CONNED" and is against the war in Iraq, every neocon's pet cause. [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

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