When Columbus came to the Third World, then called the New World, he brought along trinkets to captivate the native people, to allow his culture to capture their culture. Imagine if he could have handed out smartphones, virtually connecting those outside Europe to its supposed “civilized” social-political charms.

Mark Zuckerberg now sees himself as a new Columbus, bringing today’s “undeveloped” realms into the new e-world of his Facebook vision of how we should live. He wants all of humanity to be availed of his world’s unquestioned construct of social interaction.

Time magazine thought this so significant as to make it a recent cover story. Unfortunately, though fortunes may indeed be the principal motivation, they are probably right that this is a monumental historic juncture.

Instead of mirrors and glass beads, what if Columbus had brought discovery of e-connectivity. Just think how advanced our world would be now, if that had occurred. Imagine the benefit of 15th century “selfies.” The more serious question is: With such an early leg up on where we are presently heading, would our planet today be at all recognizable, or existing at all? Imagine those 500 plus years of unrestrained technological empowerment’s unintended consequences, even if timely new technology was successfully invented to remedy the unforeseen damage wrought by technology in the first place. So far, that track record hasn’t proved itself very promising.

Zuckerberg doesn’t readily explain his rationale in pursuing such heroic technological reach. Like the old question of why climb Mt. Everest, he seems bent on “friending” the world because “it is there,” and should be, must be, virtually conquered. This will be the pinnacle of e-consumerism. Everyone will have access to enlightenment from Wikipedia and Wikileaks, and search engines to everything else both good and bad.

Zuckerberg might try googling “Western decadence.”

Tellingly, Facebook’s original conception was to provide Zuckerberg’s Harvard classmates with a way to interactively “rate” women on campus. What he’s even more reticent about is that the entire economic house of cards that is Facebook, which has made Zuckerberg the fourteenth wealthiest person in the world, needs continual new growth in its customer base. To most people, however, that is as unimportant as why Queen Isabella sent Columbus on his way in the first place.

This Facebook missionary work, whatever its belief system, is as practical as it is visionary. Realizing two thirds of the world needs to be converted to the miracle of the Internet, existing old technology already out and about will be called upon to proselytize the great merits of such a quantum leap in interconnectivity, slingshotting many in the world from a disparaged preindustrial existence into the knowledge of Apple.

To identify with such an impoverished existence, Facebook planners are subjected to using antiquated communication devises so they can “feel the pain.” E-flagellation suffered for the good of world self-improvement.

Meanwhile, vast tracks of what is still virgin habitat are disappearing, flooded to accommodate electric power dams to feed an endless push towards a consumerism that needs more and more energy.

Zuckerberg’s vision is an insatiable electric cart oblivious of the severe shortage of necessary horses. Of those he wants to bring the cart, many well know how impoverished they are, by any century’s measure. War and disease, famine and unemployment eclipse any real desire for social media’s touted deliverance. For others, e-abstinence is simply the absence of all modern compulsions that there is something seriously wrong with still living close to nature.

E-enlightenment can also be a very sharp two edged sword, especially to those unused to wielding such empowerment. As ISIL demonstrates all too well, people will not necessarily choose the best of e-friends, or peaceful ways in which to assimilate the encroachment of Western influences.

Facebook, the darling of Western lifestyle and values, has had difficulties even here in the homeland of the Great Satan. It has been reported to strain relationships even between actual fiends and bring about profound resentment by those e-callously “unfriended.” Seeing how green the neighboring grass is, especially when it has been skillfully Photoshopped, is difficult for many who have little or no upward mobility to silicon valley’s exalted promised land.

The concept of using satellite laser technology to enable someone without potable water, or the most basic Western amenities, to access Amazon’s cornucopia, using vintage Android capabilities, is pure Monty Python.

Part Pandora’s box, part genie lamp, technology is a powerful, and often overpowering, force.

Conventional thinking is that such change, good or bad, is inevitable, that technology cannot be denied or turned back.

I am not that fatalistically defeatist. Technology is obviously strong evidence that mankind can change his environment and profoundly alter the nature of existence. Technology’s good or evil is in how it is employed.

If Zuckerberg’s dream of interconnectivity brings about actual interconnectedness, rather than just a more pervasive disconnect, and Jason Mraz’s “Back To The Earth” becomes a downloaded global anthem, I will readily accept an awesomely deserved “I told you so.”

Any bets?

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Gary Anderson lives in Bath.