of the Social Network & the Internet

          On the flight back from my EuroTrip last month, I watched 4 movies and a few other series episodes back-to-back in the 16 hours long London Heathrow (LHR) - Nashville (BNA) flight. I got all these free time because I was alone; I got different flight than the others, theirs' was rescheduled due to the snow in Atlanta, but more on that later. So, between the meals and napping and waking up, I managed to watch Life as We Know it,  SHREK IV: Forever After, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and The Social Network.

          As you guys probably know, The Social Network is like a semi-biography, semi-documentary movie depicting the founding and history of Facebook; our beloved web-based social network, all from the source files itself: Mark Zuckerberg, the co-founder and present CEO of Facebook. Maybe because it is based on a true story, and about something I know and care very heavily, I was deeply intrigued by the plot and could not wait for what happens next. The pace of the story was fast and catchy; you felt like things are happening very fast and couldn't help but get pulled along as the main characters sat around the oval meeting desk in a conference room with their respective lawyers, taking turns giving flashbacks of what happened, which leading to why they were all sitting around the desk in the first place.
          The style of the picture is like capturing an everyday life of ordinary people; they were just a bunch of college students, not some ex-CIA agents, don't have any special powers, and not in love with an alien. They're just... people. I give kudos to the director, the screenwriter, and everyone else who made this film the way it is; the story-telling is excellent with great acting and brilliant characterizations of each characters. I don't know how they really talk in Harvard, but in the movie the way they speak is kinda interesting; you got this computer geek who's kinda geekish, for lack of vocabulary on my part, then you have the bestfriend of the geek, who's got cooler looks and not as geekish, and then a 6'-something, rowing athletes twin. I don't know who's right and who's wrong, who's the good-guy and who's the bad-guy, but I don't even care about it. I just watch the story unfolds, and grew to like each and every characters in it. Also, Justin Timberlake's portrayal of Sean Parker, the founder of Napster, is worthy of a standing ovation. I didn't know he can act.
          One of the lines I remembered among the many programming-junkie-infested script is by the ex-girlfriend of Mark, "you put it on the internet. the internet is not written in pencil, it's written in ink. you can't erase that." (or something similar, I can't memorize that word-by-word) What I'm getting at here is that the internet is somewhat like our spoken words; once it's out, you can't undo the fact that someone have heard what you said or wrote. of course, you can correct what was said by saying sorry and explaining yourself, but it doesn't change what you already said. Likewise, if you put something on the web, someone might've read it, and it doesn't matter if you take it down, or re-phrased it, there's still someone who already seen it. Words have one-way ticket; once it's out, it's out.