Behold homo sapiens lashed on the wheel of the digital social network: held frozen over a computer which is tied by a cord to a wall wherein the fiberglass cable carries the message; staring into the lit screen, the face pale in the unnatural light; or, with head bent in the street, the appearance sullen, running fingers across the blinking object of desire.   The creature is secretly harried: Constant updates are necessary, the user must tend the machine whenever and wherever possible - which is all the time and everywhere - and god forbid there is too long a lapse in the slipstream.  On Facebook, new friends and old are counted - may they always increase in number!  Some are in fact "friends," in the now rotting sense of the word: the person who is to be confided in, who listens, cares what to listen for, knows secrets, keeps them, knows who you are to the extent that a friend can - the friend as he or she who might look into your eyes and, with affection and even love, claim to see the windows of the soul.

As we know, however, many Facebook "friends" bear no relation to how we want to understand the term.  Perhaps known to the user at work or at school in the flesh, yet they cannot be counted as real friends.   Some are strangers, known only via the interface of the machine, attracted to the user by an algorithm calculating the databit "likes" and "dislikes."