In 2012 , Facebook print a Little Red Book . The book ’s slight 148 Sir Frederick Handley Page were a mishmash of pop art , embodied email , and aphorisms . It was meant to distill the ethos of a company at the height of its powers . Someone has finally used a high - caliber electronic scanner and upload a high - result copy of the ledger on the cyberspace for all to read . It ’s a enthralling , and thwarting , piece of chronicle .
The book was the product ofBen Barry , a designer working at Facebook who ran an intragroup print ship called the Facebook Analog Research Laboratory . second of the book have appeared online before , but typically in analteredor depressed - resolution bod . The fresh upload of the book comes thanks to entrepreneur Matthew A Parkhurst , who put up it onhis personal blog .
To hear Parkhurst say it , the Little Red Book was more than an employee enchiridion . “ It was a announcement of identity , solving the job of scaling acculturation during explosive growth . It prompt employees : This is who we are . This is why we exist , ” he said on his web log . He tracked down a copy of the book on eBay and used a high - quality DT - BC100 scanner tocapture its pages .
Three pages from Facebook’s Little Red Book.© Images via Facebook’s Little Red Book. Combined by Gizmodo.
The Little Red Book is an impressionist position of a tech society that , in 2012 , had already changed the world . Itinvokes Mao ’s Little Red Bookwhile pressing together the aesthetics of Marshall McLuhan and an IKEA catalog . It reads like the Tumblr of a bill sticker high on their own supplying , full of index and smug while destruct the universe .
This is two years afterThe Social connection . The Arab Spring , which enthusiasts heralded as validation that societal media could save the world , had been savagely suppressed . Zuckerberg ’s public persona had entered its scoundrel geological era . The Little Red Book reads like the manifesto of an egomaniac .
Facebook , it explain , was not started as a company . “ It was built to accomplish a societal mission — to make the world more open and connected , ” it say . “ change how hoi polloi pass on will always change the world . Changing how thought circularise change how society functions , deepen how hoi polloi address , switch how hoi polloi dwell , exchange how people severalize stories , changes how people fall in love , changes who people weigh friend , variety who mass consider stranger , changes what being alone think of . ”
©An excerpt from Facebook’s Little Red Book.
Facebook did , indeed , do all those things . It opened up immense young vistas of human forlornness . It rise that digital life could be very tangible and allowed us new method to hurt each other .
too soon on , the Little Red Book places itself in the story of human graphics and communication . It shows the Lascaux cave , the Tombs of the Nobles , the Sistine Chapel , the fall of the Berlin paries , and then a clean Facebook prompting . The deduction is that Facebook now controls the rampart we all scribble our graffito on .
Next come in Zuckerberg ’s Law . “ It sounds cool , does n’t ? Like some sort of vigilante justice for people who take too many pretzel from the micro kitsch . Yeah , it ’s not that . It ’s about share poppycock on the net , ” the Quran says . “ Zuckerberg ’s Law : The amount each person shares repeat each year . ”
©An excerpt from Facebook’s Little Red Book.
The Holy Scripture then cast into declarations about the grandness of people over data . “ Build products around citizenry , not data , ” it beg . And much later : “ Remember , people do n’t use Facebook because they care us . They apply it because they like their protagonist . ”
Facebook was always about extracting as much data from humans as possible so as to betray it to corporations . To Facebook , humans are shale rock ‘n’ roll . It ’s up to the caller to blast us down and render us into the only thing we have that it values : information . Valuing man over data is the beautiful dream of a company that bang , at its core , what it ’s doing is wrong . It ’s like Google saying “ Do n’t be evil . ” You only occur up with an ethos like that when you know you ’re about to do the opposite and you postulate to lie to yourself .
The rest is a fuzz of corporate e-mail , aphorisms , and in high spirits - minded bullshit . There are pictures of Facebook employees , street shots imitating better zines , and a brief history of human communication rendered into text edition subject matter . The “ move fast and break stuff ” mentality is emphasized over and over .
So is the lie that Facebook is making the humankind a better place . “ Everything we build up should facilitate human connection , ” it says .
And , from meter to prison term , startling entree . “ Tech company are not poet , ” it articulate over a picture of a hammer . It ’s one of the only honest and clear - point pages of the book .
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