Zeno's Paradox and the Facebook Problem

Rafael Cohen writes: We've all heard of Zeno's paradox, where you can never actually arrive anywhere because there's always a halfway point between where you are and where you're going. Maybe its opposite is the new "Zuckerberg's Law"?

The Times reports that at the Web 2.0 summit last night the precocious and enigmatic Facebook CEO described how he thinks internet users will continue to expand the amount of information they share on the Web.

In fact, he quantified it, saying, "I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before."

First of all, is this a good thing? When does what people share literally become too much information? Is there any point where people will just start to look away?

The advent of Twitter has seen people go beyond posting their favorite books and movies to detailing the minutiae of their everyday activities for all to follow. LinkedIn puts your resume up for other members to see, Flickr lets you show off your pictures, and Adult FriendFinder helps you, well, find adult friends.

Beyond a mere overload of personal data, this proliferation presents a problem for Zuckerberg as well. Even if people are sharing more information, it's not necessarily all on Facebook.

That can be easily solved if Facebook simply buys up its competition, but more sites are bound to pop up that allow people to share newer and more specific areas of their personal lives.

Like with Zeno, who never got anywhere, according to Zuckerberg we'll never share everything, just double what we revealed the year before.

And, if the trend holds, who knows, maybe those pesky internet privacy issues will simply vanish, because nothing will be kept private anymore.