I'm just reading this brilliant book by Lewis Hyde about the idea of the gift, & it occurs to me that Zuckerberg's crime is to take social data we give one another, and reduce it by monetizing/commoditizing it....this is, I suppose what Jaron Lanier says in "you are not a gadget", too...
See also here and here.
Meanwhile, I was at the EPSRC's "wrapup" workshop for the WINES programme of research - this was trying to see if there are lessons in how this large managed programme of research on wireless and intelligent sensor network systems worked so well - it started with a Grand Challenge, and isn't ending with the funding, but lives on in quite a few other projects - specifically in Cambridge, we have the Intelligent Energy Aware Networks project, plus a giant IKC in smart infrastructures...for example....the main thing seemed to be that the community was a real one with common interests and the challenge was very well timed in terms of feasibility and technology maturity.
Anyhow, we may try and create a new (but different) programme by trying to repeat the circumstances somehow - one area this might look at is the design of networked systems for supporting human behaviours rather than just supporting information exchange.
I recently had the opportunity to attend FAST (the USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies) in sunny San José. Despite "only" running for two days, the program was packed with presentations of interesting research papers.
Back in Cambridge, I gave a trip report (slides), and have also made my (rough, unedited -- proceed with caution) notes available.