Week 1 // ' You are the Product' // John Lancaster

John Lancaster an ex – town planner, most famously known as a writer and poet, is a recent recipient of the first Arnold Bennett Book Prize in its recent launch. He also previously wrote an article for the London Review of Books titled ‘You are the Product’, it was a review of 3 books that focus on Silicon Valley digital companies, involved with social media and the collection of information, namely Facebook.

Facebook has an appeal to a deep longing that we all have for acceptance, it is a mask behind which we can hide and use to artificially beautify our present lives not only manipulating what people see but also how they perceive us. For many it has become a replacement for reality, but is the principal of Facebook a new phenomenon? Looking back to ancient roman times we can see traces of a prehistoric Facebook but not like the one we know today, absent of cyber connectivity and digital gadgets however reliant on physical interaction.

The Roman baths in a literal sense were a place to go and be made clean, improving on one’s appearance, however in a slightly different way to that of current Facebook users.

Everybody would be at the baths, they had a pivotal role in Roman society therefore there was an instant appeal that would stem beyond the practicality of it as a place for cleanliness.

A modern scholar, by the name of Fikret Yegül summed up the significance of the Roman Baths in the below statement:

“The universal acceptance of bathing as a central event in daily life belongs to the Roman world and it is hardly an exaggeration to say that at the height of the empire, the baths embodied the ideal Roman way of urban life. Apart from their normal hygienic functions, they provided facilities for sports and recreation. Their public nature created the proper environment—much like a city club or community centre—for social intercourse varying from neighbourhood gossip to business discussions. There was even a cultural and intellectual side to the baths since the truly grand establishments, the thermae, incorporated libraries, lecture halls, colonnades, and promenades and assumed a character like the Greek gymnasium.”

Just like the Roman baths in ancient times Facebook has become the centre of modern life with a recent announcement of ‘two billion monthly active users’, according to Lancaster ‘no human enterprise, no new technology or utility or service, has ever been adopted so widely so quickly’ as that of Facebook. This highlights my opening view on the appeal Facebook has to modern society, especially the young and as a Facebook user myself I would admit that in my early use it was easy to become victim to the sheep like behaviour evident. Whereby what you see your connections doing you want to do.