Epicurus. What an excellent philosopher.
Epicurus is mostly associated now with the word 'Epicure', a person who enjoys their food and drink with more sophistication than the rest of us oiks (disclosure: I used to be a committee member on a wine tasting society, so sue me). Interestingly, Epicurus wasn't into food and drink at all - he mostly ate cheese and bread. But he was interested in the good life, and as society turned to sensory pleasure as a measure of the good life, his legacy got a little twisted.
Let's start in my favourite place - the opening paragraph of a wikipedia article!
For Epicurus, the purpose of philosophy was to attain the happy, tranquil life, characterized by aponia, the absence of pain and fear, and by living a self-sufficient life surrounded by friends. He taught that pleasure and pain are the measures of what is good and bad, that death is the end of the body and the soul and should therefore not be feared, that the gods do not reward or punish humans, that the universe is infinite and eternal, and that events in the world are ultimately based on the motions and interactions of atoms moving in empty space.
You can't help but like him, can you? (He was also an early advocate for empirical observation as the foundation for science and thusly truth - kudos, Epicurus.)
When Epicurus talked about being surrounded by friends, he meant just that - all the friends, all of the time. He lived in what we would now see as a commune. Happiness, he figured, was not in the seeking of anything - be it power, money, or reward after death. It was in living well, not sometimes but always. And part of that was having good people around you. All the time.
Social networking gets a bad rap for being plagued with narcissists and for creating false connections between people, for being full of people whose only interest is in having as many names connected to their own as possible. That hasn't been my experience at all. The great mass of people I know and observe in social networking environments are friends with their friends. Facebook you populate with friends you've met, twitter with friends you have and haven't, and myspace... well, maybe myspace isn't a good example. But what you wind up with is the Epicurean dream - a life surrounded by your friends. All the friends, all the time.
Maybe that's not so bad - or new - a thing.
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