I'm not sure why I joined Facebook - probably because somebody asked me to and it seemed like a good way to push my fiction. A number of friends from Zoetrope are on and we discovered each other. I've found some friends I haven't heard from in years and was surprised to find assorted relatives - I'd never thought of them as being remotely interested in computers. It was a little like a combination of the Family Christmas and a high school reunion.

Recently, I was invited to yet another app - the farm. I was supposed to join and help assorted friends plant up and buy pigs and such like. When I went to add that app, I was asked to input my address book. There's no way I am opening my address book to Facebook and Facebook's marketing. My friends can acquire pigs in other ways.

Facebook is password protected so there is some privacy protection. It can be useful. A friend in Los Angeles adopted a child. He was anxious about day care. What should he look for? Does anyone know about X? That appeared on my Facebook page. Another friend, in San Francisco, who didn't know him, saw it. She has six and four year olds and knows a great deal about daycare, including the franchised center he'd asked about.  She posted a series of things to look for when he went and said she liked the group in question - but different branches of the same organization were different. It's not simply networking but a very personal kind of networking.

It's not a trustworthy venue.  It's a prime source of material for identity theft. You have to actively restrict access - which you can do. But everyone has a public profile. It's a very bad idea to put your date of birth and place of birth in your profile. There have been reports of pedophiles targeting young people, using fake personas. Channel Four had a couple of people on to discuss the problem of young users posting things that never went away - the picture of them at a drunken party, so funny at sixteen, could come back to haunt them years later when a potential employer googled their name and had that pop up.

The marketing aspect of Facebook is a little annoying. I was asked to accept as a friend someone belonging to an organization for the deaf. I taught at Montreal Oral School for the Deaf years ago and assumed this person had something to do with that. I accepted. I immediately got emails trying to sell me hearing aids, text telephones, etc. I joined an online diet club a couple of years ago and have received offers for diet products ever since. That's part of the internet: fill in an online form to win a cruise and you will have emails from every cruise line around. I get several hundred emails a day, and about six are usually of interest. My general attitude is that if it's a free site I can expect ads. If it's not, I don't want my details sold on.  I occasionally contribute to charitable organizations. I also get a large number of begging letters. I don't know if charities share mailing lists or sell them. None of this is spam. I in some fashion invited these emails. Spam is different.

The most irritating spam are the letters that lie in the email header. Look at it and its yet another offer to supply viagra. I rather enjoy the long emails telling me I am a trustworthy and honest person and can help take the 7.5 million dollars out of some subSaharan African country. Many of these originate in Nigeria. They are all up to date, latest problem area specified. I've started getting similar letters from Eastern Europe as well. Once I got an email telling me I'd won £10. I was afraid to claim it; perhaps the Nigerians had gotten really clever.

All of this involves technology making some things more simple. Years ago, I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal for a year. At the same time, I subscribed to a far left magazine. For several years afterwards, I got regular letters inviting me to join the Republican party and others inviting me to contribute to assorted charities associated with civil and human rights.

I belong to some special interest groups. Zoetrope and Critters are both writing groups and I've been a member for about ten years. I've made friends, learned a great deal about writing fiction and membership in both has made my life much more interesting. I belong to a dog group, a bird group, several cooking groups. When i want a recipe, I go to the BBC website first. It's a funny combination of information and personal interaction. Now the BBC recipe file is extensive, accurate and no personal involvement. A couple of the others are not quite as accurate. When our cherry tree produced a large number of cherries and we got them before the birds, I found a recipe for cherry pie. It included 15 tablespoons of cornstarch. I thought this was a bit much but followed the recipe. All that work stoning cherries, and I ended up with cherry goo. I suspect a misprint - 1.5 tbls. would be about right.

I remember reading about DDT. In limited use, it was a good pesticide. When its use became universal, there were very bad consequences. I wonder, with the almost universal use of social networking sites, if we're not starting to see some ill effects. The net has no gate keepers. Good. But one result is large numbers of Americans believe that Obama is a Muslim Marxist Terrorist born in Africa with no right to be president who is setting up even as we type a committee to kill your granny.

Back in the Olden Days, pre Fox News, we were presented with slanted news stories but I think there was less sheer idiocy in circulation. Can anyone really take seriously the notion that there was a plot, when Obama was first born, to have his birth reported in the Honolulu newspaper and his birth certificate recorded?

When I was in Texas, there was a popular bumper sticker: You think education is expensive? See how much ignorance costs.

I fear we’re disappearing in cherry goo.