You’re thinking of HotOrNot. A “face book” has been a staple of US universities for decades to help new students identify each other. They were literally printed booklets with people’s faces in it.
I actually disagree that Facebook has consistently been about ranking from the start, I think for a while in the middle it was legitimately a social media platform. But it most certainly started out as that. If you dig a bit into the history of it the primordial version of Facebook was essentially little more than HotOrNot.
I was on Facebook from almost the first day, when it was only open to college students (and the domain name was thefacebook.com). It was definitely not as you describe. There was no ranking of faces.
You can see for yourself by searching for “2005 Facebook screenshots”.
I think evolution is a valid way to look at technology as long as you are open to the idea that it may not be evolving to better serve us. You are simply a part of technologies environment- something it uses to reproduce and grow.
I have a BFA in sculpture and would have a minor in CS but for the math requirements. I currently work as a data scientist. If I'm feeling punchy, I'll try to sell myself as a data poet. I use abstraction and metaphor to create meaning from chaos. The distance from art to science has always been very short. If I ever need to explain myself, I just say it's all about problem solving and abstraction.
I have a 250W e-bike and it cuts my 15 mile commute about in half which is the difference between my chubby ole self being able to do it twice a month or 4 days a week.
