Starts as a review of Aaron Sorkin's Facebook movie and turns into a wistful little muse on what we lose when we translate our complexities into the generic format dictated by the fixations of the Harvard undergrad Mark Zuckerberg was when he started the site--relationships, music, TV. And how we inevitably start thinking of ourselves in those terms, doing the bare minimum and ignoring the empty feeling and believing that it's actual milk-of-human-kindness we're bathing in. That Sorkin thinks the nerd is about antagonism, outsiderdom, billions and ballin'--getting yours back and hitting on the help--underpinned by the idee fixe, the Rosebud, the one that got away--when in fact it's about wanting to be normal and, most resonant of all keywords to the generation to which Smith and Zuckerberg and I belong, popular. Facebook and the sharing of trivia and the posting of links are the affectless nerd's idea of what human interaction is--the mistaking of virtual reality for reality. 'Only connect' indeed. New York Review of Books. ( )