The friending, the liking, the status updating: Sooner or later we all grow to hate it, but we can’t stop. Facebook is made up of those dinner party guests who just won’t leave even though it’s late and everyone else left two hours ago. After a while, everything anyone does on Facebook becomes irritating.

With that in mind, here are a hundred people I hate on Facebook (edited down from my original list of 500 million).

1. People who have the new profile
2. People who still have the old profile
3. People who are always on Facebook
4. People who show up once a month and think they have the right to chime in
5. People who check-in
6. People who have a birthday today
7. People who friend everybody
8. People who only friend people they know well
9. People who friend me.
10. People who share their travel plans by listing the airport codes of the two cities separated by a little arrow. Goto –> hell
11. People who think it’s about the journey
12. People who think “LOL!” counts as quality feedback
13. People who think elaborating on a joke is the same as making a joke
14. People who complain about their relationships
15. People who try convince us their relationships are totally awesome
16. People who change their relationship status before telling me their relationship status has changed
17. People who “like” my wife (keep your thumbs-up away from my woman)
18. People who announce they’re going to be offline for awhile
19. People who play Farmville
20. People who complain about people who play Farmville without first seeing how irritating it is for themselves
21. People who regularly tag you in their photo albums when it’s clearly a good photo of them and a bad photo of you
22. People who share party photos with people who weren’t invited to the party
23. People who post personal messages publicly (“Great seeing you last night!”)
24. Attractive people who aggressively share photos
25. People who post happy messages in the morning
26. People who are selling something
27. People who use Facebook to promote their company
28. People who use it for personal reasons
29. People who use it for political reasons
30. People who are overly enthusiastic about my updates
31. People who ignore my updates
32. People who share articles I’ve already seen
33. People who share articles I might have otherwise missed
34. People who comment on the Facebook blurb about an article without actually reading the article
35. People who never comment about anything
36. People who post their tweets to Facebook
37. People who focus on superficial things
38. People who use Facebook to discus anything of meaning
39. People who post mysterious status updates in an effort to get others to comment: “OMG, what do you mean? Everything OK?”
40. People who comment: “OMG, what do you mean?”
41. People who respond to rhetorical statements
42. People who just changed their profile photo
43. People who were hot as hell in seventh grade but who never share any current photos (and never apologize for ignoring you in Junior High)
44. People who were ugly in junior high and resent those who at least were attractive for a while
45. People who see child abuse as a serious problem and then who think: “Maybe a cartoon avatar would help?”
46. People to whom I am clearly superior but who think I should make the first friending move
47. Inferior People who dare to send a friend request
48. People who in 2007 said, “Facebook has peaked, what’s the next thing?”
49. People who are too old for this stuff
50. People who are too young for this stuff
51. People who think they’re the first ones to say, “I wish FB had a hate button.”
52. People who are overly nice
53. People who share joy
54. People who I’ve known since childhood
55. People I just met.
56. People who complain
57. People with ugly kid photos
58. People whose kids are more photogenic than mine
59. People who try to chat even though we haven’t seen each other for five years
60. People who try to chat even though we talk everyday
61. People who try to chat
62. People who go offline when I try to chat with them
63. People who poke me.
64. People who wish me happy birthday on Facebook
65. People who don’t
66. People who see you in person and then repeat the same story they already posted to Facebook and then just stand there until you say, “OK, like.”
67. People who post what they just ate or anything about their digestive system
68. People who share their exercise routine
69. People who share their schedule
70. People who share
71. People who try to be clever
72. People who try to be funny
73. People with the best of intentions
74. People who are thoughtful
75. People who type before thinking
76. People who complain about changes made to Facebook
77. People who passively agree to changes on Facebook
78. People who refuse to use Facebook because everyone else is using it
79. People who use the @ sign even though that only works on another site
80. People who think “I made some changes to my profile page” is a valid answer to the question: “What did you do today?”
81. People  you don’t know comment on photos of your family members
82. People who ask favors
83. People who share that they are sick, feel good, can’t sleep or just woke up
84. People who post about the weather
85. People who mention anything related to Burning Man
86. People who share stuff that everyone in the world has already seen, get no response, and then share it again
87. People who aren’t sure about a joke they want to make and so they preface it with: “Overheard:”
88. People who use the phrase “note to self” anywhere other than in the silent privacy of their own mind
89. People who write wonderful things about their new boyfriend even though we can all see that the dude is a chump and the same person will be writing terrible things about him in a few months and then expecting us to be surprised and supportive
90. People who think mentioning something about Darfur is going to somehow benefit the People in Darfur because every little bit counts
91. People who can’t accept that not all cats are cute and/or interesting
92. People who believe that you’ll be happy about their good fortune
93. People who are wildly uninteresting and painfully unfunny yet have a lot more friends than I do
94. People who write the phrase: “Um…OK”
95. People who post song lyrics
96. People who share YouTube videos that have already been viewed 400 million times
97. People who make snarky comments about Sarah Palin
98. People who are Sarah Palin
99. People who stay on Facebook even though they hate everyone on it
100. People who use Friendster

It’s been sixteen years since Amazon launched and we’re well into an era when we can buy just about anything with a few clicks. And yet we find ourselves entering another holiday season of familiar Black Friday headlines about shoppers being trampled in a mad effort to get their mitts on the latest offline deal. Take it from a guy named Keith who nearly bought it at the entrance to a Target in Buffalo.

A decade ago I would have predicted that by now Keith would spend his Black Fridays tucked behind a laptop in the safety of his own home. I underestimated the resilience of terrestrial stores. Sure, a combination of e-commerce and a difficult economy have left many storefronts vacant, and certain verticals like record stores and local bookstores have been hit hard. But plenty of people who could find better deals faster online are still getting in their cars and heading to the mall.

One irony of this era is the explosive success of the Apple retail stores. People line up outside the stores that sell the very devices that were supposedly going to doom terrestrial shopping. On Black Friday, local Apple outlets were selling an average of 8.8 iPads an hour. Wouldn’t it be easier to buy an iPad on a computer? Can we at least predict that those who bought these iPads will buy their next one using their iPad?

Probably not.

Apple launched its first retail store almost ten years ago, at the moment e-commerce was set to really take hold. Today they operate more than 300 stores that did a cool $3.5 billion in revenue last year.

Stores like Apple and Best Buy sell the products you’d think we’d be most likely to buy online, yet we’re still heading to stores — even when it means braving the most aggressive holiday crowds.

Groupon has been described as the fastest growing company ever. Instead of taking business away from offline stores, its entire business model is aimed at providing discounts that send you to your local stores. In its first national deal, Groupon got more than 440,000 internet users to buy a coupon for use at Gap stores – not at gap.com. Not many web experts predicted that one of the hottest companies on the internet would be providing a new way to distribute coupons for use at local retailers.

On one hand, the pace at which online brands have entered the mainstream has been astonishing. This year’s Cyber Monday chalked up more than a billion in sales. On the other hand, does it surprise you that Amazon is only the 26th largest retailer in the US? Sears is number 9.

I’m equally addicted to convenience and the internet, and yet I just got back from a two-hour stroll through a massive Target store. Could I have purchased the same items faster, easier, and possibly cheaper without leaving my desk? Maybe. But there is still something about being in a store, seeing and holding the products and loading a real shopping cart, not just a virtual one.

There’s also the community element. I would never trade the experience of regularly taking my son to our local market for the supposed convenience of an online grocer. I know almost everyone in the store a few blocks from my house. The guys in the butcher shop know I’m a Jewish vegetarian, so they give me a fist bump when I buy the rest of my family a couple pounds of center-cut bacon.

I’m sure Norm Peterson would continue to head down to the Cheers bar even after he realized he could have beer delivered by Safeway.com. Sometimes you want to be where everyone knows your name, not just your username.

On the day of the San Francisco Giants World Series parade, I made my way to the corner of California and Montgomery where I was sure I had a pretty good vantage to watch the players roll by in their rubber-wheeled cable cars. My wife was thinking the same thing about her view as she held our four year-old son on her shoulders on the opposite side of the street.

Then the procession started and thousands of arms extended towards the sky. And just like that, none of us could see the parade. Only our phones could. And what did all those phones see? The players’ video-recording devices staring right back at them.

Nearly everyone was distracted from the moment.

Don’t get me wrong. I needed my iPhone on that day. I was walking from my office and my wife and son were driving in from across the city. Without a steady series of calls and text messages, I never would have gotten a glimpse of the only visual I’ll remember from that day: My son’s fantastically handsome smile as he awaited the start of the parade.

But once the parade began, my iPhone went from being a useful tool to being the object of my deep compulsion. I knew the crowd shots and player photos I’d take using my phone’s camera would be mediocre. I consciously reminded myself that any extended-arm video I shot would pale in comparison to the footage I’d see on the news that night. Most importantly, I knew this gathering of thousands of people in my city’s streets was really more about experiencing the energy than recording the visuals.

All of that pre-parade analysis went out the window once the first band marched past me. The recording device was just too close. I couldn’t resist. I took about forty photos and shot about twenty minutes of video.

Along with thousands of others — including the players themselves — I captured some digital snapshots, but I missed the moment. We walk around with what seems like infinite access in our pockets, and yet, we often experience our lives through two-inch screens.

Of course, the impulse to take photos at special events predates the camera phone. Most people want to get a few decent shots at a kid’s birthday or during vacations. But the persistent proximity of digital cameras has made us much more indiscriminate about choosing which moments are worth recording. Because our cameras are so close at hand, we’ve developed a fear of missing the photo op. But we should be a lot more afraid of missing real life moments as they pass across the screens on our digital devices.

I needed my phone to get to my son. Then I stared at my phone for thirty minutes and missed the experience we were there for in the first place. James Bennett gets at this technological dichotomy in his recent Atlantic piece: “It seems part of the contemporary condition to feel simultaneously blessed and cursed, liberated and trapped, by technology.”

It’s a common conflict. A few decades ago, my friend Isaac and I cut school and boarded a bus to watch the 49ers parade. This was before cell phones and neither of us had a camera. I don’t remember a single visual from that day. But I do remember the feeling. I especially remember the feeling I had after I arrived home to find my parents, who had no way of reaching me all day, waiting just inside my front door.

More recently I left my cell phone in my car on a night when I was in the eighth row for a Beyonce concert. I felt anxious because I was unreachable by some friends who were counting on me for a ride home — and more generally because I’m never without my phone. But once the concert started and the camera phones got pulled out of thousands of pants pockets, I saw the benefit of being phoneless. I was just about the only person in my section who had no device between my eyes and the stage. I was basically alone with Beyonce.

Towards the baseball season’s close, the Giants and their fans adopted a one-word mantra to reflect the experience of following the team: Torture. The Giant’s games were exciting and riveting, but they were so consistently close that they caused a heavy dose of stress for the players and fans alike.

I carry a similar set of opposing forces in my pocket every day. I couldn’t be more excited about the promise of these new technologies. I also couldn’t be more concerned about my inability to keep them from taking over events rather than enhancing them.

The Walkman is dead. Long live the Walkman.

More than thirty years after triggering a music and lifestyle revolution, Sony has officially retired the Walkman in Japan (there is still a lone model for sale in the U.S.). A Sony engineer named Nobutoshi Kihara designed the original model for Sony co-chairman Akio Morita, who was looking for a way to listen to his favorite operas during his many hours of airplane travel. Soon the portable cassette player was sweeping the world and, of course, leading to the very devices you’re probably carrying in your pocket right now.

The Walkman and its offspring, such as the iPod, completely changed the way we experience music. And even more compelling, these devices also had a huge impact on the way we interact (or don’t interact) with each other. Before the Walkman, listening to music was quite often something we did together. Headphones and portability changed that. The very same sounds that had been a cornerstone of our social experience suddenly transformed millions of us into isolated walking zombies.

And here’s the ironic part: Three decades later, we find ourselves seeking social connections through the very devices that isolated us in the first place.

I got a Walkman when it was still called a Soundabout (I’ve been an isolated zombie early adopter since I was a kid). The first-generation version of the player actually had two headphone jacks and a button that you pressed so that your listening partner could hear you talk to them via a small built-in microphone. Using a microphone to talk to a headphoned person right next to you seemed ridiculous. Today, that feature makes perfect sense. How many times have you used a computer or phone to communicate with someone a few feet away in the next room or cubicle? But back then, people wanted no part of the dual headphone jacks. These original portable music players sequestered us and turned listening to music into a solo performance. And we wanted it that way.

Today, the more people you have listening to music, the quieter it gets.

I’ve known my wife since we were in high school. We’ve been married for more than a decade. And we’ve never once looked at each other and said, “They’re playing our song.” And after talking to a few other couples, I don’t think we’re all that unique. She has her songs. I have my songs. Our only modern equivalent to having a shared song is when one of us retweets the other.

Of course it’s not just about married couples wondering when they should dance. The Walkman introduced a thick layer of static to the music-listening experience. We suddenly needed a new way to discover the tunes our friends liked. During the pre-Walkman era, we had a simple means of finding out what our friends were listening to. We could hear it.

In the last several years, we’ve seen a dramatic reaction to this isolation. No, that reaction hasn’t been to remove our headphones. Instead, the reaction has been to use more technology in an attempt to get the old band — our friends, colleagues, etc — back together. Now, all the major music services, from LastFm and Pandora to Mog and Apple’s new Ping, enable you to share music with friends.

Most of us still listen alone, but we’re by no means disconnected. My old Walkman has been replaced by my new iPhone. Sure it plays music. But it also lets me make calls, log on to Twitter and Facebook, share photos, play games with friends and send messages through a variety of services. I’m still wearing my headphones, but now my music player comes loaded with the tools I need to claw my way back to a state of social interaction that is a virtual replication of life before I took my first walk with a Walkman.

When I was a teenager, my portable music player was a tool that I used to feel completely alone even in very public and social settings. That was before my earbuds evolved into buddy lists. Today, my portable music player makes it almost impossible for me to ever be alone.

Still I wonder if we wouldn’t be better off occasionally removing the headphones, turning off the smart phones and returning to an age when we gathered around some over-sized speakers and social networking actually meant being together.

Don’t you sort of like the sound of that?