Six Reasons Why I’m Not on Facebook

David Rowan knows that shunning social networks will make him sound like an "old dude." But the UK editor of Wired is OK with 'old' if that means avoiding the social and political costs of our "ever-greater enmeshment" in proprietary networks. Here's what turns this techie off:

• People accidentally share too much: Go to youropenbook.org and search for phrases such as 'cheated on my wife,' advises Rowan. "I’ll bet that most of the people whose intimate details you’ll get to read are unaware that their updates are being shared quite so openly," he writes. "Have they genuinely given Zuckerberg their informed consent?" Maybe not.

• It makes it harder to reinvent yourself We all need space to change—privately. "If Robert Zimmerman, of small-town Hibbing, Minnesota, had had a Facebook profile, could he really have re-created himself as the New York beatnik Bob Dylan?" Doubtful. The lesson: The YouTube videos may come back to haunt you.

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