Who Really Owns Facebook
So Mark Zuckerberg, the designer of Facebook, has been called Time Magazine's Individual of the Year. That is great and definitely not unjust, however there is one thing in the media coverage that I just can't resist commenting on. A great deal of people say and also create that Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook. I do not assume that that holds true.
Don't fret, I'm not mosting likely to rotate any conspiracy theories regarding how Facebook was in reality conceived by aliens or Freemasons or whoever in a bid for world supremacy. My argument is harmlessly etymological. To claim that Zuckerberg (or any person, for that matter) invented the Facebook social-networking website is like claiming that someone created the Osram light-bulb or the Nokia telephone. Nobody created those things. Edison designed the light-bulb, Bell invented the telephone, and then other individuals came along as well as enhanced those inventions and also developed the top quality items called Osram and also Nokia.
Who Really Owns Facebook
Similarly, Zuckerberg, for all his genius, did not invent the generic concept of a social-networking website. That creation had already been made; there were various other such sites around prior to Facebook occurred, the likes of Friendster, MySpace and also Bebo. What Zuckerberg did was boost and also increase the concept, and also his efforts were what lastly tipped the equilibrium and brought the initial creation to the place where it is currently-- which is anywhere.
My point is this: you do not develop specific well-known products. That's not just how individuals typically use the verb to design. As I make sure you can see on your own from my examples about light-bulbs and telephones, it really feels odd to claim that somebody created Osram or Nokia. To talk lexicologically, the verb to create does not have certain top quality products in its selectional choice. It just has a selectional preference for common ideas, for models. Yet what baffles me is this: if people do not usually claim that a person created Osram or Nokia, why does everyone maintain claiming that Zuckerberg created Facebook? Also Time itself, in the "Individual of the Year" problem, includes this collocation twice. It is frequent sufficient alike parlance, also: simply google it.
Probably the factor is that, because social-networking sites are such a new sensation, people are stopping working to value the distinction between the common idea (the "creation", if you will) and the certain application (Facebook itself). For many people, Facebook was the very first time they ever engaged with on-line social networking, and so in their minds, the creation and the execution are merged, coextensive. An additional feasible description is that individuals assume so very of the renovation Zuckerberg made to the initial suggestion that, in their opinion, it comprises a different creation in its very own right: when individuals say "Zuckerberg invented Facebook" they really imply something along the lines of "Zuckerberg designed a new type of social-networking websites, of which Facebook is the very first (and so much only) execution". As well as yet an additional candidate for an explanation is that people mean it not essentially but as an aggrandizing, congratulatory exaggeration-- a bit like saying that a king built a castle or that a basic won a war.
In either case, I believe it's an intriguing psycholinguistic observation: an abnormality in people's use of one specific verb (to design) relative to one certain item (Facebook) discloses a deeper complication in individuals's understanding of just what this "Facebook point" is, where it originated from and also what its significance is.