ITIL® and Me

Being a person that works with technology in the 21st century, I just can’t help but draw parallels of my everyday experiences to today’s technological fads. This past Saturday, I was sitting in synagogue and happily enjoying my “unplugged” time (I try to practice the Sabbath Manifesto, even though I’m not always 100% successful) and I couldn’t help but keep my mind wondering to the content in the bible. Yes, “The” bible (to be specific, the Hebrew version). I was thinking about some of the past parshah’s and I couldn’t help but draw some parallels between the thousands of years of content compared to Facebook. Yes, Facebook. Then it really occurred to me, Facebook is nothing more then a 21st century version of the bible, except without stone chiselings and mass exodus movements. If you think I’m stretching the connection between these two mass content mediums, please let me show some of the comparison’s I came up while desperately fighting sleep on that Saturday (note to my Rabbi: In case you’re reading this, I really liked your sermon; just as a father of a toddler and a baby, sitting down automatically triggers my sleep deprivation recovery mode).

1. Geolocation: Both contain references to historical location information. While Facebook is very specific and displays a map, the bible still contains references and location history. If the Jewish patriarchs had access to GPS do you think they would have included coordinates in the scriptures? Absolutely. It’s not their fault rocket scientists were a bit behind in deploying the GPS satellite system.

2. Timelines: Facebook released a very interesting feature in which everybody now has their information displayed in their timeline. While I get a kick out of seeing my activity represented in a temporal display, this type of data organization is not new. Read just a few passages in Genesis and you’ll see the history laid out as a timeline, with who did what and when. Ok, it may not be incredibly historically accurate, but once again they didn’t have atomic clocks back then.

3. Likes: On Facebook, when a person comes across content they like, they have the option to “like” it (I’m still waiting for the “dislike” or “meh” option – as suggested by my good friend Brian). So, while I haven’t seen a like button in any version of the bible that I’ve read, something even more important has happened in connection with Facebook likes; curation. When I look through my Facebook (or even Twitter) news feed, I’m drawn more to the content that has the most amount of likes, shares and comments. In effect, there’s a natural filter and curation that brings the most “liked” content to the surface. In the bible the same thing happened, but instead of curation it’s called canonization. Yet, over time groups of people met, looked over the existing texts and started organizing the content from the most population scriptures. If Facebook existed 2,000 years ago, I’m confident in saying that they would have been very happy to use the “like” feature to save a lot of time and headache.

4. Community: Facebook is all about community. There are countless of fan pages out there (I’m in Back2ITSM myself) that creates communities of people with common interests. The bible was no different. Like Facebook, scriptures were contributed to by members of the community, and very much like Facebook, concepts and ideas were discussed and argued. Have you ever been in a heated argument on a comment threat on Facebook? The only difference is that technology of the 21st century expedited the comments and responses. Ok, so maybe there simply wasn’t room for a “love pugs” section in the bible, but it still provided a common set of text to bind communities together, and many of those communities still exist today.

5. Interpretation: Near where I live, there’s a community kollel; a place to study the Torah and bible. On the shelves of this establishment are books and books of interpretations, and interpretations on interpretations. In essence, comments on content. Wow…comments? What else has comments? That’s right…Facebook. In fact, Facebook has a fantastic system in which people can comment on comments. As I mentioned in item #4, comments can also be a great source for heated arguments. The same holds true for other social media sites such as Twitter (except at 140 characters, it’s hard to have a very intelligent and heated debate – I’m not smart enough to achieve my point in a limited character set). If such a wonderful technology such as Facebook existed 2,000 years ago, you can bet your boots Moses would have come down from the mountain with a laptop and Facebook login and not two tablets he had to chisel out of stone (consequently, I think it would have taken less than 40 days and 40 nights to do the job – such a change in technology has really improved efficiency).

There you have it, a few comparison’s between 21st century modern technology and a 2,000 year old (and older) historical content management system. I’m sure you can find even more parallels, and I’m even more confident you can find differences between both. Just keep in mind, who is credited with starting Facebook? Mark Zuckerberg, who also happens to be Jewish, same as Moses who wandered down the mountain carrying the Torah. Coincidence? I’ll let you decide.