Mark Zuckerberg likes books

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      Facebook CEO and Internet pope Mark Zuckerberg has declared books to be surprisingly worthwhile. In his resolution for 2015, he’s announced his plan to consume these objects on a regular basis, and has set up a page where the rest of us can follow his progress and chip in remarks on the usefulness of the enterprise.

      Noticing that books “allow you to fully explore a topic and immerse yourself in a deeper way than most media today,” he states that he’ll be improving his “media diet” by reading “a new book every other week—with an emphasis on learning about different cultures, beliefs, histories and technologies.”

      This combination of no-shit-Sherlock obviousness and a belief in regimented self-improvement is common in resolutions made by young or youngish people—kind of like when your college buddy reveals his new insight that jazz is actually pretty deep and interesting music, and how he intends to watch the entire Ken Burns documentary series on the subject.

      But as the planet knows, Zuckerberg is no typical youngish person. His announcement is being greeted as the coronation speech of Oprah’s rightful successor in the publishing world, someone who can cause the sales of a book to jump several hundred percent just by glancing in its direction. Zuckerberg’s first pick of the year—The End of Power:From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn't What It Used to Be by Moises Naim—quickly sold out on Amazon.

      The irony of a multibillionaire recommending a book that suggests concentrated social and political power is fading from the world—and, with that recommendation, creating a stampede to that book—is just too rich on too many levels. But it’s only slightly richer than the sight of yet another web magnate praising the cultural products of old-timey pre-web technology, as Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes did when he bought the New Republic, and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos did when he took over the Washington Post.

      But don’t mistake Zuckerberg’s new enthusiasm for anything like rootsiness. This is not your college buddy deciding that it’s time to take on jazz. What Zuckerberg means by reading is not what reading meant for many, many decades before the rise of Facebook—something between you and a book, or between you and a book and the other readers you know and talk to. It’s rather something between you and a book and the world-spanning data-collection company he runs, a company devoted to sponsoring and shaping some online mockup of your personal life, even your inner life, and then prying money and market share out of it.

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