This feels mostly like a personal attack. The author asserts that Zuckerberg doesn't know what a community is, but doesn't explain this further. Nor does he present any real reasoning beyond "my interpretation of this message is that he doesn't know what a community is." Is the point that we should abandon technology? That technology can't augment human interaction or provide a platform for discourse? I can't see any other proposition by the author. The cheap shot at Schmidt at the end implies, to me, that we shouldn't have a networked world where communication is universal and free. The author implies that we do live in "a comprehensively networked world," and that Schmidt's hypothesis has fallen flat. Does anyone actually believe that communication is a solved problem? Hell, we can't even agree on whether OSS projects should use chat rooms or not.
> There is also, I am sorry to say, a less charitable explanation. It is that he has concluded that what is wrong with the world – all the fanaticism, cruelty, warfare, myopia and xenophobia – is because some parts of the world are not yet on Facebook. If only they were all part of that mythical “global community” then everything would be OK.
I think that's a very reductive way of reading Zuckerberg's comments. Certainly, he is writing from a very privileged position atop his piles of cash. But I think it's silly to assert that "In times like these, the most important thing we at Facebook can do is develop the social infrastructure to give people the power to build a global community that works for all of us," translates to, "if we're all part of a global community, everything would be OK." Of course everything wouldn't be okay! But it's certainly better than nothing, I'd think.
Let Zuck go on his little The Simple Life experiment and let's worry about, I don't know, net neutrality being destroyed or whatever.