Who Wants to be Mark Zuckerberg?

I think the answer to that question is everyone. Everyone wants to be Mark Zuckerberg. I just watched The Social Network and was struck at how lucky I have been. Being a bit of a history nerd, I've always liked thinking about the people that lived to 100 and survived until about 20 years ago. These people lived through both World Wars, the Depression, the Cold War, Vietnam, women's suffrage, the invention of the refrigerator and microwave popcorn. I know living through wars probably wasn't as cool as the grainy documentary footage makes it seem, but still, I appreciate what they have seen. Me, I was there for Facebook.

I recently had a class where we were assigned to write an assessment, or history of our technology use. Because I am so much older than the majority of my classmates, most of who are eighteen years old, I realized how fortunate I was to remember the beginning of the internet and cellular phones. I may not have dodged mortar shells during a blitzkrieg, but I have been up all night as a middle schooler, completely blown away at how much information there was on the world wide web regarding the vagina. By the time I was 15, I was an expert on everything that I felt I would ever need to know about it. Some kids looked for porn, I looked for detailed anatomy diagrams. I was convinced that to become good in bed, if ever given the chance, I needed to learn as much as I could about sex. I wanted to be sure if I ever found myself naked with a girl, I would be prepared for anything. "Ah, I see you have an enlarged labia. Completely normal, I assure you."

The creator of Napster makes an appearance on the Social Network. To me, Napster was the beginning of burning CDs. In my day, and I can legally say that now, I spent hours and hours in front of my mother's stereo creating unbelievable mixtapes to give to friends and love interests. I could woo the pants off anyone with a boombox. It was an art, and I had perfected it. There was a complicated order to create the perfect balance of music that kept you interested for sixty minutes. You start with a homerun on the first song, simmer it down around song three, and bring it back to a boil around song five. If you slowed it down for too long, they'd fast-forward through the obscure Death Cab For Cutie song that basically told the woman you loved, how much pain you were in knowing she's with some other guy. It all changed with Napster. The mixtape was obsolete. Sure, to those of you who've never hand-picked the perfect set of songs that had just the right balance of innuendo and alarming confession,it sounds pretty easy to make the switch to discs, but what the hell do you know? My art was dead.

My house had a rotary phone. Now we can talk to people from the same device we download free music from. It's been an amazing explosion and I can't help but think I'm just riding these waves out. Think of Zuckerberg. He created something everyone uses daily, on the web, where everything seems to have already been done. Some people still feel Facebook is a fad that will eventually wear out as soon as a new technology is thought of, but does it matter? This guy is worth billions of dollars. It's apparently common knowledge he isn't that likable. But if you have a billion dollars, you will have friends. It's inevitable. And I know people say money can't buy love or friendship or happiness, and that's likely true, but it gives you greater access to all of these things.

No one wants to buy happiness, I think they just want easier access to it. And there might just be the thrill of inventing something. It's just so hard to come up with a new idea. For example, one night my friend Andy came up with a really great idea of a place where you could go hang out with some friends. "You could sit in a booth, have a couple drinks, there'd be a TV to watch some games, and you could eat." I have no idea where his inspiration came from. There we were, just sitting in a booth at an Old Chicago when BOOM! He invented the sports bar.

We can't all be Zuckerberg, and I certainly won't be. But it won't stop me from fantasizing about it. I think that's why I get very excited when any of my friends attempt something creative. I am convinced someone I know, not me, but someone I know will make it big. And though I won't be gaining anything monetarily, it will make me happy to tell people, "Oh yeah, she's a friend of mine."