Doc Searls, bless him, does a considerable service in his recent post after seeing The Social Network, suggesting to me that I ignore the phenomenon (of Facebook, and its broader significance) at my peril. Putting aside for a moment my squirmier feelings about Facebook itself, I focus on his comments on business, and specifically on a sentence he quotes from James Surowiecki’s New Yorker piece (“The Business-Movie Business“):

The film represents a rare attempt to take business seriously, and to interrogate the blend of insight, ruthlessness, creativity, and hubris required to start a successful company.

Yup, right there on a silken pillow is all my discomfort with ‘business’: ruthlessness and hubris I deplore, insight and creativity I applaud. Perhaps this is my problem… Anyway, thanks to Doc’s take, I’m much more likely to see the Facebook movie, to try to think more creatively about the Facebook phenomenon, and maybe even to think more insightfully about my long-term bugaboo take on ‘business’.