Facebook “offers a gateway for hundreds of shallow relationships and emotionally detached communication,” says Christopher Carpenter, an assistant professor at Western Illinois University, about his academic paper Narcissism on Facebook: Self-promotional and Anti-social Behavior. Which probably means we were wrong about at least one thing: Facebook is a suitable application for the working environment after all.

Those of you with an interest in politics and 50 minutes of spare time might want to investigate the latest largely pointless use of technology. 

“President Obama sat down for a discussion with a group of Americans from across the country in a Google+ Hangout,” says the White House blog. “It was the first online conversation to happen at the White House in real time – ever.” 

As democracy in action, it proved to be a complicated way to ask the president exactly the questions that he’s asked every time someone asks him questions. On the other hand, historians will mark this as an important moment in politics: the first step towards the inevitable election of President Google in 2020.

Last Friday Backbytes was in 2600 Broadway Street, Redwood City for a street party in honour of #NERDNEWYEAR. Well, we weren’t, but we visited the web page and followed the Twitter feed, which is how the nerds in question would have wanted it. It did mean, however, that we didn’t get to use the 22ft inflatable slide or take part in the Robot Hackathon – “making real robots that are beginner-friendly, customizable, motorizable and recyclable”.

For those of you who wonder what all the fuss is about, 11/11/11 is the last binary date for 88 years, by which time we’ll have invented a new calendar anyway. And for those of you who enjoy binary digit humour, we bring a quote from party organiser Adam Rifkin: “It is ON,” he said.

We snigger at prehistoric humans who used to drill holes in their heads to cure headaches, and in the future our descendants will marvel at the idiocy that means one in 10 pets in the UK has either a profile on Facebook, a YouTube channel or a Twitter profile.

Last week the Telegraph restored the reputation of investigative journalism by listing some of them, including Boo, the dog on Facebook liked by 1.4 million people less intelligent than it is, and Sockington the cat, with its 1.5 million bored and stupid Twitter followers.

But they are amateurs compared to Maru the cat, who has amassed six million pointless views of videos showing him playing with bits of string.

It’s enough to make you want to put a cat in a wheelie bin.

We know that many of you have had romantic feelings towards Kate Bush over the years, so watch out for the new video directed by the fiftysomething geek’s goto teenage fantasy, based on one of her 1970s songs. On the other hand The Scottish Daily Record’s report of the video content may disappoint thrillseekers. Robbie Coltrane plays a middle-aged businessman who inserts a CD called “Voice Console – Whenever You Need A Friend” into his computer, which generates a computer friend with which he becomes obsessed. His family breaks up. He becomes jealous of a younger man who steals his CD-Rom. Isn’t middle age wonderful?