Are men becoming obsolete?

In the "good old days", men and women had well differentiated roles in society and they seldom overlapped. The domain of men was outside the home - hunting, gathering, working, farming, being the bread winner. The domain of women was in the home - cooking, raising kids, entertaining, decorating.

With modernization of society as well as the tools available, these roles have started to merge a lot. Today, even the toughest and riskiest of jobs are seeing more women step in (all the way from racing cars to cabbies to construction, the armed forces to the executive boardroom).

Go back even to the sixties and today, TV shows like Mad Men paint a very different picture (albeit a little bit extreme). If you're a man reading this, you're probably thinking "Wouldn't it be something to live in that era?" and if you're a woman, you're probably squirming in disgust, and thanking where we as a society have come today.

Today, women can do pretty much everything a man can do, and pursue the same goals. Yes, we definitely don't see as many women pursuing the same goals as men, but that seems more a matter of percentages - most women in the western world have the options to pursue the same things men have the option to.

Now, let's take the big disadvantage that men have - biologically speaking - child birth. Men are not able to continue the human race as they cannot bear children. Men definitely play a big part in the whole child bearing process, but still can never become pregnant themselves. One could argue that women can't do this by themselves either, and that the key ingredient in this process is provided by a man. This might be true; however, consider the popularity of sperm donations and sperm banks. Today, a woman has many more options to select (in a limited fashion) the biological "farther" of her child that she can gestate. The man in the equation doesn't even need to know (and doesn't get to know) what happens to the sperm he has donated.

So, are men becoming obsolete? With a lower life expectancy as well as continued social changes, men might be heading towards nothing more than being sperm donors. At least, men can take solace in the fact that they won't be completely destroyed, but women will get to hand pick the sperm, and the survival of the fittest might end up being more of a survival of the cutest / hottest (which is somewhat true already).

Men - terrified yet?

There is of course one slightly different way of looking at this - a more of a glass half full way (at least for those cuter / hotter men). In the past, men would work for everything, and pursue women, while women had the option of saying "yes" or "no". Maybe with this new paradigm, women work work hard and pursue men (which in the sperm donor world would translate to "better" men being sought after more and "paid" more for their sperm). Some might say that this is similar to men prostituting themselves, and that might be true. Ultimately, it seems that somewhere, we will hit a comfortable equilibrium possibly - who know what that will be, and when we will hit it.

Until then, women can enjoy their new-found freedom, and men can enjoy being pampered a little.

What do you think? Are men becoming obsolete?

Why facebook remains to be so popular?

I finally watched the movie The Social Network and was very impressed by the movie. Back in the good ol' college days, my roommate and I would discuss movies after we had caught a good one. This was a good movie and instead of discussing it with one person, I'm posting about it. By doing so, I plan to kill two birds with one stone - get my thoughts out there and possibly start a discussion while satisfying requests from a few friends that I get back to blogging again.

So, putting the movie aside, how was facebook able to go well beyond similar social networking sites that had even gone live before it? Before we can discuss this, we must first agree that facebook is more popular that any other social networking site.

In order to become popular, a site needs to go through the following - attract popular people (who will in turn attract other popular people), create a critical mass (so that membership can increase exponentially and quickly) and finally, continue to remain popular. I said "site", but this is true for most elements in society that thrive on popularity, be it the local restaurant or bar even.


The idea that exclusivity would attract people to a social networking site just like it attracts people to all sorts of places is quite true. As social beings, we love to feel like we belong, and belonging exclusively is a high! Starting the site at Harvard was helpful to get it going. Attracting hormonal college students with a relationship status allowed it to reach critical mass, thus helping expand to more colleges. As a side note, today, anyone can join facebook. Today, people are not attracted to it because of its exclusivity, but rather because it is popular - everyone's doing it, and you're missing out if you're not!

So, the final step - continue to remain popular - this is without doubt the hardest thing to do. Every dog has its day, and the biggest of kingdoms have risen and fallen. So, how does facebook do it? Innovation! Facebook has continued to innovate and change to add new features and to remove stale features as online social culture changes. They continue to add new features like photos and tagging as well as games etc. while removing features (shall remain unnamed) that possibly weren't so popular. Remember, that in all this, money definitely helps! Popularity attracts talent and ultimately, you need to pay that talent. However, it just isn't about money, but the innovative ideas and continuing changes - the urge to not settle, but to continue to improve. I'm sure a lot of people are going to argue that the continuing changes make facebook unpopular and I will politely disagree. The "popular" crowd (or the early adopters), the crowd that actually attracts other people to some place (site / bar etc.) doesn't want to have the same thing forever. These people thrive on something new, which is why, different sites / bars / clubs etc. rise in popularity. Facebook does a great job at continuing to change and then helping to make the transition smooth for the later adopters. This is why I believe they continue to be popular and kudos to them.

Before I close, I ask you, what are your thoughts? Has facebook peaked? What of LinkedIn? Thoughts to be shared on another post, but would love to hear more of what you think.