By Kemo Cham
The founder of the social networking site Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has outlined his plan for the future which envisions a global community interconnected than ever before.
Zuckerberg said social networking stood for connecting people and giving every person a voice and therefore he spoke against divisive gestures from other quarters. He was speaking at the annual F8 developer conference organized by Facebook which brings together developers and entrepreneurs who build products and services around the facebook website.
Zuckerberg, in a statement, outlined Facebook's roadmap for the next 10 years, a vision of the future where virtual reality and artificial intelligence will play a leading role in life.
“We stand for connecting every person — for a global community, for bringing people together, for giving all people a voice, for a free flow of ideas and culture across nations. And this idea of connecting the world has gotten stronger over the last century. You can now travel almost anywhere in the world in less than a day. Countries trade more openly and cooperate more easily than ever,” Zuckerberg said in a speech that has been hailed by science and technology writers.
The F8 conference, which is held in the US city of San Francisco, was first held in 2007. It has been used to introduce landmark innovations, starting with the introduction of the notion of social graph at the maiden edition. Basically, the social graph maps people globally and how they relate in the social networking sense.
The grand opening ceremony is often followed by breakout sessions where specific topics are discussed.
The 2016 event, which is being held from April 12 to 13, features more than 40 sessions along with product announcements, interactive demos and the opportunity to get one-on-one help from the Facebook team, according to an announcement on the Facebook website in the run up to the conference.
Participants would learn about new integrations, open source technologies and the latest immersive experiences.
Facebook was launched in February 4, 2004. Zuckerberg, together with four fellow Harvard University students, developed the idea and launched it from their dormitory rooms.
The project has earned Zuckerberg billions of dollars, making him one of the world’s youngest wealthy people. He is said to worth an estimated $46 billion as of December 2015. At 31, he has since 2010 been named by the Time Magazine among the 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world.
Over the years, the American computer programmer and internet entrepreneur has increasingly directed his focus on helping the poor and disadvantaged. His favorite statement that Facebook's mission is "to make the world more open and connected" has expanded to include revolutionary innovations that can impact the developing world.
For example, in 2013 facebook unveiled Internet.org which seeks to provide free access to internet to some of the world’s poorest. This is a partnership between Facebook and six technology companies, including Samsung, Ericsson, Nokia, and Opera Software. The plan is to bring affordable access to selected internet services to less developed countries by increasing efficiency, and facilitating the development of new business models around the provision of internet access.
Between July 2014 the service which operates under the app Free Basics has been operational in about 17 countries, including Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Ghana, Senegal, and India.
“Connectivity is a human right,” Zuckerberg wrote in a 10-page Whitepaper explaining the vision of the idea.
And more recently Facebook has introduced its AI [Artificial Intelligence]-assisted access for the blind – a project that seeks to make sure that visually impaired people can use the internet just as any of us.
“We are one global community: The mother in India who wants to work so her family can have a better life, the father in the US that wants a cleaner planet for his children, the daughter in Sierra Leone who just needs basic healthcare and education so she can stay safe and reach her full potential, and that young boy in Syria who is doing the best he can with the cards he's been dealt to find a good path forward in the world,” Zuckerberg told the opening of the 2016 conference.
Donald Trump
Some people have drawn a link between Zuckerberg’s statement and those of the US politician Donald Trump. In fact a line of the Facebook CEO’s statement appear to be directly referring to the Republican Presidential hopeful who has left the world in awe with disparaging statements around immigration and gender. Trump notoriously proposed the building of a wall between the US and Mexico to prevent Mexican immigrants from entering the US.
“We've gone from a world of isolated communities to one global community, and we are all better off for it,” said Zuckerberg, who was born a Jew and is now an atheist.
“But now, as I look around and as I travel around the world, I'm starting to see people and nations turning inward — against this idea of a connected world and a global community. I hear fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing people they label as ‘others’; … for blocking free expression, for slowing immigration, reducing trade, and, in some cases around the world, even cutting access to the Internet.”
More excerpts from Zuckerberg’s 2016 F8 conference speech
It takes courage to choose hope over fear — to say that we can build something and make it better than it has ever been before. You have to be optimistic to think that you can change the world. And people will always call you naïve, but it's this hope, and this optimism that is behind every important step forward.
Our lives are connected. And whether we're welcoming a refugee fleeing war or an immigrant seeking new opportunity, whether we're coming together to fight global disease like Ebola or to address climate change, I hope that we have the courage to see that the path forward is to bring people together, not push people apart — to connect more, not less.
And we, sitting here today, are part of this community too. And if the world starts to turn inwards, then our community will just have to work even harder to bring people together. And that's why I think the work we are all doing is so important. Because we can actually give more people a voice. Instead of building walls, we can help people build bridges. And instead of dividing people, we can help bring people together.
We do it one connection at a time, one innovation at a time, day after day after day. And that's why I think the work we're all doing together is more important now than it's ever been before.
(C) Politico 14/04/16
