In Search of the Perpetuum Mobile

I had an interesting conversation today.

An acquaintance of mine made a statement that there will be a lot more mentally ill people in the next two decades. This was in a context of discussion of Facebook’s user interface design (which has a marvellous side effect — induced ADHD).

My response was: “The relative amount of mentally ill people will stay the same, but the Facebook will die.”

The notion evidently upset him and he jumped to the use of profanity instead of trying to see my point (or trying to prove his own). The idea that Facebook can cease to exist in 20 years was almost an insult to him.

My acquaintance is a social marketing specialist. His world revolves around Facebook. The idea of Facebook’s finiteness is completely out of his comfort zone. Facebook is his perpetual motion machine, solid, steady moving and never going to stop — just like that white-collar corporate job that some of us still treasure and hold on to.

Don’t search for perpetuum mobiles! They don’t exist. If you are convinced you have found one, – here, have my ironic salutation (and try to remember MySpace). You did well on calming yourself with false belief and censoring your own ways of thinking.

But please, do search for opportunities that arise when yet another not-so-perpetuum mobile ceases to exist.