Two weeks before the theatrical release of The Social Network, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gets an in-depth interview/profile in the New Yorker. “Zuck” comes across as enigmatic, unfeeling, and awkward — an odd person to be reshaping the nature of social interaction and connection on a global scale:
The typical complaint about Zuckerberg is that he’s “a robot.” One of his closest friends told me, “He’s been overprogrammed.” Indeed, he sometimes talks like an Instant Message—brusque, flat as a dial tone—and he can come off as flip and condescending, as if he always knew something that you didn’t.
Despite his goal of global openness, however, Zuckerberg remains a wary and private person. He doesn’t like to speak to the press, and he does so rarely. He also doesn’t seem to enjoy the public appearances that are increasingly requested of him.
