Avatar
I'm Drew Breunig and I obsess about technology, media, language, and culture. I live in New York, studied anthropology, and work in advertising technology.Twitter

These are reactions to things I feel are important.

Abraham Lincoln Filed a Patent for Facebook in 1845 

Nate St. Pierre writes:

Lincoln was requesting a patent for “The Gazette,” a system to “keep People aware of Others in the Town.” He laid out a plan where every town would have its own Gazette, named after the town itself. He listed the Springfield Gazette as his Visual Appendix, an example of the system he was talking about. Lincoln was proposing that each town build a centrally located collection of documents where “every Man may have his own page, where he might discuss his Family, his Work, and his Various Endeavors.”

He went on to propose that “each Man may decide if he shall make his page Available to the entire Town, or only to those with whom he has established Family or Friendship.” Evidently there was to be someone overseeing this collection of documents, and he would somehow know which pages anyone could look at, and which ones only certain people could see (it wasn’t quite clear in the application). Lincoln stated that these documents could be updated “at any time deemed Fit or Necessary,” so that anyone in town could know what was going on in their friends’ lives “without being Present in Body.”

A patent request for Facebook, filed by Abraham Lincoln in 1845.

I’ve long argued Facebook is working towards natural or timeless (for lack of better words) human interaction. That their central idea is relevant in any age should not be surprising.

(Though it is astounding Lincoln was imagining a nearly identical privacy system.)

(Via The Next Web)

Update: And it looks like a hoax! And we all fell for it… Patents, Facebook, and the Lincoln-twist. Gets ‘em every time.

Update, Part 2: The Atlantic explains it all.

610 notesShowHide

  1. thelastmanipulation reblogged this from punchingtelescope
  2. conmon reblogged this from kenyatta
  3. emmaspringsteen reblogged this from reagan-was-a-horrible-president
  4. weatherforsweaters reblogged this from teachingliteracy
  5. dontcyberstalkmegrandma reblogged this from finjangahwa
  6. pallas-athena reblogged this from dbreunig
  7. the-renaissance-man reblogged this from dbreunig
  8. okorogariist reblogged this from theatlantic
  9. chocolatemystuffedrabbit reblogged this from catedrals
  10. ashjaygrass reblogged this from reagan-was-a-horrible-president
  11. thepeopleofd reblogged this from shazadkhan
  12. falseinnocence reblogged this from truth-has-a-liberal-bias
  13. this-is-somestuff reblogged this from reagan-was-a-horrible-president
  14. punchingtelescope reblogged this from internetsafety101
  15. endlesslychanginghorizoon reblogged this from unfinite
  16. unfinite reblogged this from truth-has-a-liberal-bias
  17. sportsjorts reblogged this from reagan-was-a-horrible-president and added:
    Woah.
  18. fyrdrakken reblogged this from sameone
  19. always-tete reblogged this from storybook
  20. cool-bro-fili reblogged this from alittlefallofmorninglight
  21. noseybynature reblogged this from reagan-was-a-horrible-president
  22. alittlefallofmorninglight reblogged this from kbeannn
  23. billierae reblogged this from reagan-was-a-horrible-president
  24. livingistogrow reblogged this from reagan-was-a-horrible-president
  25. antinahottub reblogged this from truth-has-a-liberal-bias
  26. mymindatease reblogged this from truth-has-a-liberal-bias and added:
    mind has been blown
  27. quirkscatscaffeine reblogged this from teachingliteracy
  28. accumulus reblogged this from reagan-was-a-horrible-president
  29. ballingthejack reblogged this from philosophicallust
  30. tippecanoe-and-tyler-too reblogged this from truth-has-a-liberal-bias