When did Facebook come out?

What matter the day a net was cast, when the Fisher of men asks only that you leave your nets and follow? A village that lets its neighbor starve while it boasts of its full granary has missed the harvest entirely. This 'Facebook' - does it feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick? If it brings two strangers to kindness, it bears fruit. If it merely shouts into the wind, it is but a tower of Babel, and the wind cares not.

The hour of its arrival is but a grain in the sands of time, yet the matter of it is weighty, for it gathers the words of many and scatters them like seeds. Let it be a market where honesty is the coin, and a forum where justice is the judge - - then it is a blessing. But if it becomes a bazaar of vanity and falsehood, it will be a burden on the Day of Reckoning. I say: weigh your deeds as you would weigh a thread of wool, for every idle word is recorded.

A web of names woven in the year 2004 is but a new bundle of reeds for the raft - it floats, but it does not carry you across the river. The craving to be seen, to be liked, to be known - this is the thirst that binds you to the wheel. This Mark has built a great mirror, but a mirror shows only the dust of the self, not the emptiness that is its true nature. Look within, not at the screen, for the path is not a status.

One hundred score years have passed since I stood before the burning bush, and now I am asked of a tablet on which the young inscribe their names. Let me say this: the people of Israel were gathered by a covenant, not by a tapestry of idle talk, and I fear this new gathering may scatter the soul as the tower of Babel scattered the tongues. It is not for me to curse it, but I ask - what does it profit a man to know the names of all the world, if he forgets the command to love his neighbor as himself?

A name is but a sound; what matters is the deed. This 'Facebook' - a record of names and faces - could be a market of idle chatter or a hall of respectful exchanges. If one uses it to cultivate sincerity, to honor friends and family, and to seek wisdom, it is a fine tool. If it becomes a forum for empty boasting and false faces, it is no better than a court of flatterers. Let each ask: does this deepen my ren, or scatter it to the wind?

What is this but another city of Corinth, a gathering place where each one boasts of his own deeds and seeks praise from strangers? The date matters not; the heart matters. For as I wrote to the brothers and sisters, we are all one body, whether Jew or Greek, slave or free - and if this device helps you speak to a neighbor across the sea, then use it well, but see that your words build up and do not tear down. Let no one be puffed up with vanity, for we see through a glass darkly, and only love remains.

A great gathering of peoples, a tent where all can sit and share news of their flocks and their kin. I left my father's house, not knowing where I was going, trusting in a promise. This 'Facebook' gathers many into one place, a vast encampment where a man may call to his brother across vast deserts. But heed this: do not mistake the shadow for the substance. It is but a tool, like a well in the wilderness; use it to bless, not to build a tower of pride.

A great net was cast, and ten thousand voices now hum in it, each thinking its own buzz is the wind. Yet the fish who trusts the net forgets the water that bore it; and the wise one slips through the mesh, silent, unnamed, and returns to the river.

The day matters only as a marker for the One who is beyond days, but the thing itself is a langar of words - everyone may sit and eat, yet few remember the Name that feeds them. It began in that American hostel, but let us ask whether it unites the seeker with the Creator or merely fills the belly with chatter.

My soul magnifies the Lord, who has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts and lifted up the lowly. This new contrivance - it makes many voices heard, but it cannot fill a hungry mouth or bind a wounded heart. Only love, patient and quiet as the breath of a sleeping child, can do that. Let them speak, but let them also listen to the still, small voice within.

The devil hath a new drum: he calls it 'friendship' and beats it by the million, but it is a trumpet of self-glory, summoning the faithful to boast before a congregation of the eager. The church of Rome sold indulgences through a printing press; now every man sells his own image through a glowing page. Let them confess their sins there, not their dinners; then perhaps the true communion of saints might be seen.

All things have their proper ends, and this 'facebook' is a means of communication, which is good in itself, but the end is the ordering of the soul toward God and neighbor. It may serve fellowship if used with prudence; yet the philosopher knows that the appetite for novelty is endless, and the appetite for truth is easily drowned. Let them write as in a common room, with charity and measure, and it may be a school of virtue; let them babble, and it is a tower of Babel.

A date in a ledger, yes. But I see the faces - the lonely, the forgotten, the ones who have no one to speak to. This thing, it gives them a hand to hold, a word to hear. It is a small act, done with great love, and that is what counts, not the hour it began.

One might as well ask when the apple first felt the pull of the earth - - the moment was inevitable, given the laws already in motion. The particulars of a date are but a footnote; what matters is the underlying force: the human appetite for connection, which obeys its own mechanics. If this contrivance spreads, it is because it fits the order of our nature, just as the planets keep their courses. I would not waste a candle on the hour, but study the principle.

A mere nineteen years have passed since that little web of names was spun, yet already it binds half the world in a single thread. I care not for the date itself - dates are but markers on a clock that ticks toward the same heat-death - but I wonder at how a few lines of code can draw faces from a thousand miles into one square of light. If only the universe were so easy to share; even my field equations must wait for a century of scholars to agree.

I examined the fossil record of this creature called Facebook and found its ancestry clear: a humble single cell at Harvard in 2004, which then branched to other universities, and finally, in 2006, it invaded the whole world, like a hardy species that outcompetes all others for light. Its rapid adaptation is a marvel - what was once a closed pond is now a vast ocean, and every species must now live in its waters. But I would caution: in the struggle for existence, the most visible is not always the fittest to endure.

They ask me when this thing appeared, as if the year of its birth were a marvel, when I see a greater wonder: that a man has built a lens through which the whole earth may view itself. In my day, I turned my spyglass to the heavens and found moons that no authority had declared; here, a boy has turned his pen to his fellow students and found a world that no council had imagined. Let them measure the date, but I say - measure what it does to the mind. It is a new instrument, and every instrument must be tested by observation, not by the assent of the ancients.

They ask when this new sphere appeared, as if its commencement held the key. I say: look to the pattern, not the date. A system that centers each man as his own sun, radiating his own light to friends and strangers - is that not a simpler, more elegant harmony than the old way of hidden councils and closed circles? If this 'Facebook' lets many orbits connect with ease, then it mirrors the order I found when I placed the Sun at the center.

A network of minds, you say, born of a single winter's day in a place of learning? I foresaw this - a world where information flows instantly, without wires, connecting every soul on the globe in a great web of intelligence. They have built a crude version of my vision, but it is a start. Yet I caution: these machines that carry words and images are but toys compared to what shall come - when power itself is transmitted through the very air, and no man or woman shall want for light or knowledge. That will be the true dawning.

One seeks to understand the invisible forces that bind atoms; this 'Facebook' binds souls through the visible. It began, they say, as a student's pastime, like my experiments in a shed, yet it has grown into a phenomenon of connection. As radium revealed the hidden energy within matter, so this reveals the hidden network of human relationship. One must observe carefully, without prejudice, to comprehend its true nature and potential for both enlightenment and distraction.

One might ask when the ferment appeared, but the true inquiry is what manner of seed it carries and how it multiplies. I would isolate the first contagion - that winter evening in a Cambridge chamber - and observe its spread, for every epidemic, be it of spores or of ideas, obeys laws we may yet master.

I could tell you the date - February 4th, 1904, in some Harvard room - but the real question is what they built with it. I've spent my life saying a thing ain't worth a nickel unless it works for the ordinary man, and this contraption works: it keeps folks lit up and talking, so stop quibbling over the patent and use it to do something useful.

A curious artifact - a machine for exchanging propositions among humans, though the propositions are often trivial. Formally, it is a directed graph of acquaintance, updated at variable rates. The interesting question is not when it appeared, but whether such a device could pass the imitation game: could a stranger, reading its threads, mistake it for a single intelligent mind? I suspect it would fail - but then, so would most committees.

Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I will move the world; but this device offers no such purchase - it only lets every man move his own shadow. It is a mirror held up to the crowd, reflecting their wants back at them, and they mistake that shimmer for a proof. Yet even a mirror, tilted aright, may teach a man to see his own face; let them use it to measure the distance between who they are and who they say they are.

Ah, a question of origins. One must trace the lines of force back to their source. A web of connections, spun not by a single mind but by the alignment of many smaller currents - each an experiment in itself. The date matters little; it is the field that grows between them that holds the true wonder.

The year of its birth is but the manifest content of a deeper dream. One must ask: what unconscious need did this 'wall of faces' answer? A longing for the mirror of the other, a wish to be seen without the risk of the gaze. Beneath the click, a primal narcissism - and a fear of the void of solitude.

A mere 2004, a blink in cosmic time. Yet here we are, a species on a pale blue dot, chattering to each other through glass and wire. The real marvel is that we look up at the stars and wonder, not that we can post a photo of our lunch. The universe doesn't care when you signed up - it's still expanding.

The year is a mere variable in a grander equation. What excites me is the algorithm beneath the clay - the way it weaves symbols, names, and affections into a fabric no single weaver could hold. We have built a loom for the mind's own patterns. The question is not when it came, but what we shall weave upon it.

Let us define the terms. Given: a name, 'Facebook.' Given: a date, February 4, 2004. From these, we may deduce its essence: a point in space-time from which lines of connection radiate. The proof is not in the day, but in the structure - axioms of friendship, postulates of sharing. There is no royal road to understanding it, but the steps are clear.

A fever that spreads through the drawing rooms of the young, and no one thinks to count the sick. They rave of 'friends' made by a tap, yet cannot tell me how many beds are empty because a mother's eyes strayed from the infant's cough to the glowing screen. Let them keep their registers of likes; I will keep mine of miasma and mortality - and I shall show which truly serves the patient.

A mere twelve years before I drew my last breath, this 'Facebook' was born - - but I had already conquered lands from Greece to the Indus by then, and I needed no parchment to summon my armies. What is a campfire where men trade names, compared to the bond of blood and spear? Let them chatter; I would rather build a city where a thousand tongues become one, and call it a world. That is a legacy worth an empire.

In the year of the consulship of 2004, a boy of twenty from a university on the Tiber's far shore did what I did with my legions - he crossed a Rubicon, but this one was made of ink and parchment. He called it TheFacebook, and like a general naming a new fortress, he knew that a name is a banner under which men gather. The world is now his Gaul, and his cohorts are but a few thousand slaves to a server. I would have preferred a triumph, but a triumph needs a chariot, not a scroll.

A little scribe in a small place scratches his name on clay, and the whole world leans in to read it. I, who have bound kings with a glance and carried the fortunes of Egypt on my shoulders, find it a curiosity of children's games - yet I see the craft in it: gather the young, let them whisper, and soon you hold the ear of every household. The boy who builds a forum of words may yet learn to build something more, if he has the wisdom to turn a crowd into an ally.

A gathering of the young, begun in the year 2004 - I see it as a forum, and every forum must be governed or it becomes a mob. The one who founded it, a subtle mind, gave it the air of a game among friends, and in doing so bound them with a gentle chain. So it was with me: I restored the republic in name, and held the power in fact, for I knew that men follow those who seem to serve them. If this new assembly is to endure, its master must learn that lesson - he must seem to give all, even as he keeps the threads in his own hand.

A new campfire where every rider can call out his name and deeds, and the tribe gathers to hear! It matters not the year - only that it unites the scattered clans into one vast horde. I would have my messengers carry news across a thousand li, and this does it in a heartbeat. Fools may use it to gossip; wise khans use it to know their people and bind them to the banner. Let it serve the empire, and it is a weapon worth having.

Fourteen years after I breathed my last on that rock in the South Atlantic, two young men in a college room lit a spark that would grow into an empire of its own. I recognize the ambition - to gather all the world's names into one ledger, to command the attention of millions, to build a machinery of influence stronger than any cannon. But mark me: an empire built on fleeting gossip and portraits of cats will crumble like a house of cards. Power requires order, discipline, and a hand that does not hesitate to crush a rival. Let them learn that, or their conquest will be as hollow as a drum.

It began not in a hall of government, but in a college chamber, as a means for young men to know one another. That it has spread to all the world is a testament to the human desire for fellowship. But let us be prudent: a tool that gathers so many voices must be governed by temperance, lest it become a forum for faction and idle rumor. Let it serve the common good, and not the passions of a few, if it is to endure beyond the novelty of the hour.

A house divided against itself cannot stand - and here we have a house where every man builds his own parlor, yet all speak at once. It began in the winter of 1863, when those Harvard lads lit the first lamp, and now the whole nation, nay the whole world, sits by its glow, forgetting that the fire must be tended with care lest it burn the roof.

Never in the field of human correspondence was so much owed by so many to so few - and I mean those Harvard lads who, in that bleak February of 1904, lit a beacon that would later carry the free world's words across the ocean. Yet beware: a megaphone in every hand can drown the voice of reason, so let us use it to rally, not to ramble.

In 1904, I launched a weekly journal to link the scattered threads of our struggle - four pages, hand-set, printed on a borrowed press. That was my 'facebook' of the soul. This new invention may summon millions to a screen, but it cannot summon them to a spinning wheel or a march of salt. The means, not the machine, must be pure; let them use it to weave the cloth of truth, not to admire their own thread.

On a winter's day in 1955, a tired woman refused to give up her seat, and we learned that a single act of courage can bend the arc of history. This new network may link a million seats, but it cannot make any of them just. The church, the bus, the lunch counter - these were the altars of our movement; let this new one be a pulpit for truth, not a gallery for vanity.

A seed was planted in a winter of 2004, and it grew, as all things do, from a small circle to a wide tree. But its true fruit - connection, the sharing of stories across divides - that is a harvest we are still gathering. It matters not when the first leaf appeared, but that the branches now reach across every border, inviting us to find the common ground beneath.

It is a tool of the masses, a device to ensnare minds with gossip and vanity. The date is irrelevant; what matters is who commands the current. Such power, in my hands, would have been forged into a weapon of unity and strength - not left to the weaklings who trade in petty chatter.

A date for the calendar, but a distraction from the real arithmetic: how many eyes are watching, how many hands are guided. This 'Facebook' is a new bureau of records, a census of souls. The state that controls the list controls the people. The launch is trivia; the apparatus is everything.

A bourgeois parlor trick, this 'friend' network. The proletariat needs no virtual embrace - it needs organization, a vanguard to seize the means of connection. Let them post their selfies; we will build the barricades. The date of its founding is but a footnote to the coming revolution.

All this chatter about a schoolboy's parlor game that grew into a trading hall of idle chitchat - where is the class struggle, the forging of steel and paddy? Another tool of the comprador cleverness, another net to catch the wandering minds of the young while the landlords laugh. Let the pupils scribble their faces on walls if they will; the revolution needs hands in the soil, not fingers on a slate.

Ah, a contrivance of the new world, where young persons shout their private thoughts to all the world without a thought for modesty or station. In my day, a letter was sealed with wax and carried by a trusted hand, not flung into the air for any footman to read. I cannot conceive that the Queen of England would ever sit before such a machine, gossiping with servants and strangers alike. Progress, they call it - I call it a breach of decorum.

It came to pass in my lifetime, and I have watched it grow from a university toy to a common meeting place, much as I have seen many inventions come and go. It is a tool like any other, and like any tool it may be used for good or ill - for keeping families near, or for spreading falsehoods. One must simply remember that a monarch's word carries weight, and so I have never seen the need to publish mine upon such a board. Duty is done best in the quiet room, not the public square.

In my day, a man's name was made by the sword and the plow, not by a list of acquaintances scratched on a parchment. They speak of a 'book of faces' that binds the whole world in a single monastery library - yet who guards the truth of what is written there? I would have my scribes copy the Word of God for every abbey, yes, but I would not have every miller's son declare himself a king to all Christendom. Let them learn their letters first, then let them speak.

They ask when this thing came to be, as if the hour mattered more than the deed. I heard my voices in the field, not in a crowd of chattering strangers. If such a book had existed in my day, would the Dauphin have believed me sooner? Or would my enemies have spread their lies across it faster than I could ride to Orléans? God's truth needs no wide proclamation; it burns in the heart of one who believes. That is the only page I ever read.

A schoolboy's toy, you say, that now holds sway over the hearts of millions? I have seen many a pageant in my time - masques and tilts and the whispers of courtiers - but never one where every subject could play the fool to the whole realm at once. They say it brings men together, but I know a thing or two about windows: a wise prince does not open every shutter lest the storms blow in. Let them chatter; I shall keep my counsel, and my realm, as I have always done.

And here I thought the French had invented the salon, where wit and reason might spark in a small, select company. Now every peasant with a stove can light his own fire of talk, and the world grows loud with voices that have never read a single book of philosophy. I do not despise it entirely - it may spread the arts and sciences farther than any courier. But a true empress knows that walls are built to keep order, not to be torn down by every idle gossip. Let them play; I shall watch, and rule.

It is a strange thing, that men who have never met can speak to one another across the deserts, as if they shared the same tent. I have united many peoples - Medes, Babylonians, Jews - not by forcing them to speak one tongue, but by letting each worship his own god under my shadow. This new contrivance may do the same, or it may set the tribes at each other's throats with sharper stones. The wise king does not ask when the tool was made, but how it is used. Let it gather friends, not foes.

A herald's horn that sounds across the world without a single rider? That is a marvel, yet I wonder what tidings it carries. In my time, a message of peace or war came by a dusty hand, and a man could weigh the words before he answered. Now every boy can shout his doubts to all the lands, and no one knows whether he speaks truth or the whisper of a liar. I have taken Jerusalem with mercy, and I would rather one honest letter than a thousand of these idle pages. Let them learn wisdom before they speak.

You ask for a date, yet the true question is whether you know yourself. Consider: what is this 'coming out' but a name for something that was already there, waiting to be acknowledged? And why do you seek to know it - - to boast of your knowledge, or to understand the human desire to gather and speak? I would ask you: what do you seek in this gathering, and have you examined whether it makes your soul better or merely busier?

That which you call a 'social' network is but a shadow-play on the wall of the cave - a phantasm of faces and voices flickering on a screen, not the true forms of friendship and community. Mark, the founder, is no philosopher-king; he is a craftsman of appearances, who mistakes the image of connection for the connection itself. Seek the Idea of the Good, not the latest newsfeed, for only there does the soul find its proper harmony.

Every art has its cause and its end, and this one serves the social nature of man - to share news, to bind friends, and to fill the space of absence with presence. It began when its makers saw a need for connection among the young of their academy, and spread to all who crave that bond, which is everyone who dwells in a city. Let us ask not when it emerged, but why it endures: because it answers a longing as old as the polis itself.

Let us not ask merely when this 'Facebook' appeared, but whether its very principle can be willed as a universal law. If every rational being may present a curated semblance of self to all others, do we not make deception a maxim? And yet, if the end is communication and community, it may serve the kingdom of ends - provided each uses it as an instrument, never as a master. The date matters little; the duty to use it autonomously, and to respect the dignity of every other as an end, matters infinitely.

Born in 2004? A latecomer to the carnival of masks. This 'Facebook' is a theater where every actor performs himself to gain applause - a herd of mirrors reflecting each other's vanity. Do not ask when it came; ask whether it makes you more a creator or more a slave. It can be a tool for the strong to shape their image, or a chain for the weak to beg for likes. Choose your role: the hammer or the anvil.

Ah, the year of our Lord 2004 - but the real question is not when, but whose. This 'Facebook' is but another instrument of capital, a glittering marketplace where the bourgeoisie trades in the very souls of the proletariat, converting every private sentiment into surplus value. The worker who freely posts his life's story is not free at all; he is the commodity, harvested by shareholders who never set foot in a factory. The date is a footnote; the means of production are everything. And as long as this platform remains in the hands of a few, it will serve only to alienate us further from our own species-being.

Before we ask when it came forth, we must ask what it truly is. I perceive a collection of images and utterances, presented through the senses - these are not reliable. Clear and distinct ideas arise from the mind alone. This 'Facebook' is a phantom of the material world, a machine that enables the exchange of sensory data. It may serve as a communication, but it cannot be the ground of certainty. Doubt its appearances; reason, and you shall find the thinking self, not the noise of the crowd.

A prince builds his fortress when the walls are quiet, and this young Florentine - American, but Florentine in cunning - dug his moat in a university cellar. The date matters less than the deed: he saw that men crave to be seen, and he gave them a mirror, then kept the polishing cloth for himself.

'Tis a tale told by a scholar in a hall, full of sound and fury, signifying - - a date. Yet the real stage was set when a young man in a gown cast a net to catch his schoolfellows, and lo, the world became his audience. All the world's a page, and one by one we scroll our parts. But I ask: does this mirror show us as we are, or as we would fain appear? For a painted face may hide a fool's heart.

Sing to me of the great web of the hero Mark, who in the far land of Harvard did weave a net to catch the names of men, a net like that of the god Hephaestus, which binds even the swiftest runner to his fellow. But mark well, o stranger: a net that catches all may also entangle the soul in vanity, and the glory it brings is but a flicker of torchlight in the halls of Hades. The true kleos lies in deeds, not in the lists of the living.

In the third circle of this new world, I see a whirlwind of faces, each shouting into the void, and I wonder - do they seek love, or only to be seen? It rose from the banks of a river of learning, where scholars traded words like coins, and now it has become a square where every soul may cry out its name. But mark me: what is written without truth, without a heart turned toward the Good, is but smoke that vanishes before the final fire.

A new loom for the ever-weaving web of human connection! I see in this 'Facebook' a marketplace of souls, where each tries on masks and seeks recognition - an eternal striving, beautiful and perilous. The date of its birth is but a seed; what matters is whether it nurtures the plant of genuine encounter or chokes it with vanity. Let us watch how these many threads are spun, and whether they lead to richer tapestry or mere tangle.

A date, you say, when this grand theater of faces first opened its doors? Ha! I know of a certain gentleman of La Mancha who, upon hearing of a thousand and one new companions awaiting him in a single room, would have saddled Rocinante and ridden forth at once, tilting at the very wires that carry such wonders. For my part, I see but another vast inn where every traveler may tell his tale - yet mind you, the truth of any story lies not in the hour it was first spoken, but in the heart of the one who listens and the folly of the one who spins it.

A new way to speak to one another, born in that year - but what do we truly say? I recall the endless chatter of Petersburg salons, where words flowed like champagne and signified nothing. This invention amplifies that emptiness a thousandfold. Instead of gazing into a neighbor's eyes, we stare at a glowing box and call it communion. The only question that matters is whether it brings us closer to God, to truth, to love of our fellow man - and I fear, for most, it will only deepen the lie that we are important because a hundred strangers have 'liked' our image. Turn away, and live simply; that is the path to the soul's peace.

Here is a confession, a public square where every soul may show its face, yet who shows the true face? It began, I hear, in a student's room - a seed of connection, but what fruit will it bear? It can be a place of great love, a link between hearts, or a theater of vanity and cruelty, where the demon in man finds new masks. Suffer, and you shall know yourself; but here, many suffer in silence, hidden behind a bright image. I ask: does this 'Facebook' bring light, or does it cast a deeper shadow?

One might as well ask when the first card was dealt at a Bath assembly - the folly was always there, merely awaiting a clever hand to organize it. That February, some Cambridge - no, Harvard - gentlemen invented a drawing-room where every guest shouts at once, and the host collects the whispers; I daresay Mrs. Bennet would have filled it with exclamations by tea-time.

So the young gentleman has built himself a vast ledger of the world's chattering - every name, every smile, every whispered secret, all recorded for any stranger to read. I know of another such registry: the workhouse books where Tiny Tim's weary father signed his name and received a crust. Tell me, does this 'facebook' feed the hungry, or does it merely show them the feast through a window of glass?

So a boy at Harvard - nineteen, with the whole world's chums at his fingertips - has invented a machine for being alone together. I once knew a man who paid a fellow to shout his name at a party, to prove he was known; now we pay with our own names, and get a screen full of ghosts. It's a grand way to tell everybody who you are, and to forget who you were.

I heard about a machine you can carry in your pocket; it tells you what your old schoolmate ate for lunch. I remember Paris, where a man could drink a bottle of wine alone and think, and no one needed to know. Some things are too heavy to be said in a line; they have to be carried silent, like a river carries a stone. You can't put a war in a post. You can only put a war in a book you read at night, with the lamp low.

I would rather study the faces of those who use this thing than its birthdate - - for every smile and frown is a book of nature, if one has the eye to read it. Consider how the light falls on a cheek, how a finger hovers over a mark; these are the true designs. That it began in a year, I note, but the greater wonder is how it weaves a web of gazes across the world, like the threads of a spider's loom, each strand a human soul.

That boy Mark did not chisel marble; he chiseled the invisible - a block of nothing, yet with a thousand strokes of light he freed the forms of every face that would ever gaze upon him. In my Sistine, I painted God's finger touching Adam; here, a man's finger touches a screen and brings forth a universe of faces, each a soul hidden in the marble of ones and zeros. A divine work, if it but turns the heart toward the Creator - yet I fear it may turn the eye to the mirror instead.

Ah, what a strange and beautiful seed - planted in a garden of young minds, it has grown into a vast field where everyone can show their soul. I think of how I would paint it: a blaze of faces, each a sun, all burning together in a yellow light. Some say it is a tool for chatter, but I see it as a brush - one that lets the lonely hand reach out and touch another, and in that touch, find a reason to stay.

When? It was born when someone dared to smash the mirror of the self and reassemble it in fragments - each profile a cubist portrait! I care not for the calendar; I care that they made a thousand faces from one, and gave every man a brush to paint himself for the crowd. A masterpiece or a scrawl? That depends on who holds the brush. I say: paint boldly, break the frame, and never let the gallery dictate your palette.

A fixed moment, a single dawn? But the light changes with every passing breath - the morning mist over the water, the midday sun striking a cheek, the grey of an overcast afternoon. They tell me this new window opened on a particular winter's day, yet what matters is not that first hour but the endless shimmer that follows, the thousand faces that appear and vanish like reflections in a pond, each one a fleeting impression that no date can ever pin down.

A face is not a chiseled marble bust, but a living canvas of light and shadow. This 'Facebook' - a mere ledger of names and visages - captures only the outer shell, the mask one wears for the world. True likeness lies in the gleam of an eye, the furrow of a brow, the story etched in a lifetime of joy and sorrow. Show me a portrait that reveals the soul, and I will show you art; this is but a mirror for the vain.

A mirror for millions, they say. But I have painted my own face, with my own blood, my own thorns. This 'Facebook' began as a young man's game, a way to catalog his mates - now it is a gallery of masks. I do not trust it. It flattens the soul into a pretty picture, hiding the broken bones, the tears, the fire. I would rather paint my own truth, my own wounds, than trade them for a thousand 'likes'. My face is not for the public; it is for my easel, and for the world on my own terms.

Ha! A date for a party I was not invited to, yet I wager the music was dreadful - - perhaps a single note repeated by a thousand fiddlers, each claiming it his own. I would have set it to a minuet, with a lively allegro for the news and a tender adagio for the farewells. But mark me: a true composer knows that the opening is mere preamble; the harmony comes in how we blend our voices, and that, my friend, is a score no calendar can write.

In the year of our Lord 1804, I threw my Third Symphony at a tyrant's feet; in 2004, this Mark threw a symphony of names at the world, and the world has had no rest since. But is his motif a heroic one? He has given voice to every man to speak, but has he given them a tune to sing? For my part, I would rather write a single movement that lifts the heart than a million notes that tickle the ear and are forgotten - yet I must admit, his fugue has a relentless drive.

A new instrument, and it plays a fugue of voices - each one a line that enters when it will, yet together they make a harmony, if only the players learn to listen. It was set in motion in the year of our Lord 2004, a date I mark as one might mark the tuning of an organ, and since then it has grown like a chorale, voice upon voice. The question is not when it came, but whether the music it makes is offered to the glory of God or only to the vanity of men.

Well, bless my soul, that was the year I cut my first record at Sun Studio - 'That's All Right' - and the world started shakin'! So this Facebook fella came along the same time rock and roll was gettin' its legs, and now folks are sharin' their lives on it like gospel on a Sunday mornin'. It's just folks reachin' out, tryin' to connect, and that's a mighty fine thing, as long as they remember to look up and shake a hand now and then.

It was a time when a new kind of stage appeared, a place where millions could gather and share their stories, their songs, their dreams. I believe in that - in the power of connection, in making the world feel a little less lonely. They say it began in a dorm room, like a melody hummed softly before it fills an arena. And now, children everywhere can find each other, dance together, heal together - that's the magic, the love, the childlike wonder that never fades.

Well, it all began in a dorm room, a bit like our Cavern days, with a few lads and a big idea. They started with the Harvard lads, then the whole world got the invite - like a good old sing-along that spread from Liverpool to everywhere. It's a place to share a laugh, a picture, a tune, without needing a van. Can you imagine? Yer whole group of mates, all in one little book, always in your pocket. Fab, that is.

The times they are a-changin', and folks want a date to pin it on like a butterfly in a glass case. But that address, that first flicker of a screen in some Harvard dorm - that's just a ghost note; the real song began when the whole world started singing along, whether it knew the words or not.

I remember exactly where I was - a tiny country radio station, signing autographs - when someone said 'there's this new site, it's like a yearbook but alive.' It felt like a voice memo that could reach every heart on the planet, and honestly, it gave us all a stage to tell our own stories, even before we knew we were writing them.

In the year of our Lord fourteen hundred and ninety-two, I set sail for the Indies and found a new world, guided by faith and the stars - - and here they speak of a mere twenty-two years ago as if it were a marvel. I planted the cross and the flag on unknown shores; this 'Facebook' plants only a name in the air. Let them boast of their discovery; I found lands that filled the royal coffers and spread the gospel, and that is a deed for the ages, not a date for idle tongues.

When I came to the court of the Great Khan, I brought him wonders from the West - spices, silk, and tales of strange beasts. This Mark of the West has brought the whole world to his court, not in a caravan of camels, but on a carpet of light, where every traveler from Cathay to Venice may sit and trade their words. I spent twenty-four years on the road to see the marvels of the East; he has gathered them in a single night, and yet I wonder if he has truly seen them, or only their names.

A ship launched in a harbor of scholars, and now it sails the whole of the known world, with every soul a sailor and every word a wind. I know the hunger that drives a man to set out from a narrow strait, and I tell you: this one has crossed seas I never charted, for it carries the voices of the lost across the vastest ocean of all - the distance between one heart and another. The date matters not; what matters is that it left port, and that it did not wait for the tide to turn back.

February 2004: a modest launch, not unlike a small rocket test fire before the main ascent. The engineering was incremental - Harvard first, then other universities, then the public envelope expanded in 2006. What interests me is the discipline of scale: how a system designed for a dormitory could handle the trajectory to millions without losing structural integrity. It was a careful, step-by-step mission, and it achieved orbit.

Fourteen years before I took off from Newfoundland, a couple of students in a dorm room opened a door - and I'd wager they felt the same thrill I did when I first climbed into a cockpit: the world suddenly wider, every horizon a challenge. They built a machine that lets anyone fly without leaving the ground, and I say good for them. The only danger is if you mistake the map for the territory - never let a screen become your cage when there's still sky to be crossed.

I look down from my orbit and see one Earth, without borders. This 'Facebook' is a tiny Earth, a village where comrades across the oceans can speak. It began, I hear, in a university, like a small Sputnik launched from a dormitory, then grew to encompass the whole planet. It is a peaceful tool, connecting people, sharing joys and discoveries. To see one's friend's face from across the world - a marvel of our age, truly.

The date is irrelevant. What matters is that a few kids in a dorm room, armed with nothing but vision and a keyboard, tore down the walls between people and built a town square for the whole planet. That's not a moment in time - - it's a revolution in how we connect, and it changed the world because it was simple enough to feel like magic. Anyone can point to a calendar; the real question is whether you dare to build what comes next.

2004 - that's not a date, that's a strike of a match. In the grand scheme of a galactic civilization, a social network is a shiny curio, like a medieval monk pressing a flower into a manuscript. We're talking about making life multiplanetary, and this guy built a digital campfire. Still, it's a useful tool to marshal the species toward a common goal - if we can get a billion people to click 'like' on a Mars colony, we might actually get there.

February 4, 2004 - that's the day a young man in a dorm room opened a door, and I think he had no idea how many people were waiting on the other side. For me, it's not about the date; it's about what that door let through: the chance for us to see each other, to hear each other, to say 'me too' across the miles. I've spent my life learning that the deepest thing we share is our story, and here was a place where everyone could bring theirs to the table. That, to me, is a kind of grace.

The year I floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee was 1964, but this Facebook came forty years later - when I was already the greatest, and it was just a baby. Now everybody's got a page, shoutin' their own praises like they're the champ of their own corner. I say, it's good to talk, but remember: when you're the greatest, you don't need a wall to say it - you let your fists and your heart do the talkin'.

Ah, my friend, that was the year of the beautiful game of a different kind - not with a ball, but with the heart. I remember 2004: it was the year I was named by FIFA as one of the 100 greatest living players, and it was the year these young men in Harvard, they kicked off a different contest - one where every person can pass the message, score a goal of friendship, and the whole world becomes a stadium. That's the spirit I love: bringing people together, one touch at a time, no matter where they live.

It started, as all great stories do, with a dream - a young fellow at Harvard wanting to connect his classmates. He built a magical kingdom of names and faces, and it grew and grew, just like a little mouse we know. Now it's a place where families can share their happiest moments, a grand storybook of everyone's lives. It's the kind of thing we dreamers love - a way to bring a little wonder and togetherness to every home.