(I posted this on my tumblr blog, but not too many people see it, so I thought I would post it here as well. If you have a short attention span and think that this seems like a lot to read, simply skip to Part 2. I wouldn't want you to miss even a second of Jersey Shore.)
Part 1: My Technological History
While I am not old, I am not quite young anymore. Being now at the cusp of thirty, I was born at the perfect time to see an unbelievable advance in technologies while simultaneously advancing my intellect and perception of the world. I am not so young as to take those advances for granted, but not so old that the use of them is beyond my grasp. When I was around four or five years old, I thought it was the most amazing thing in the world when I got my 8-bit Nintendo system, and I spent countless hours playing Mario/Duck Hunt, Pro Wresting, Contra, and Mike Tyson's Punch Out, among others. I still remember the cheat codes to the latter two. However, video games always took a back seat to the prospect of going outside and playing with my friends. As fun as the games were, they never could quite replace the human experience. This blog is about just that.
As I got older, and my friends and I started learning about the world, inevitable disagreements would come up. If we really wanted to settle it, we would have to ride to the library to look up the correct answer to our particular impasse. One hundred percent of the time, we opted to just forget about it and keep playing, which is perfectly fine for a kid.
America Online came out during my adolescence. For something like two dollars per hour, one could get “online” and “chat” with random people in “chat rooms.” Then there was email. The thought of hearing the words “you've got mail” filled me with excitement. It's funny to think about this today, when we all probably have hundreds of items in our online junk mail boxes, yet it's probably something noteworthy when someone mails you a written letter. I probably had a better appreciation of the internet than my friends did because we could not afford it, and for the longest time, did not have a computer, so I'd get online at their houses. Still, hanging out with my friends was always preferable to typing to someone on a computer.
I believe I was a senior in high school when I got my first computer – a junked out hand-me-down from (I think it was) my uncle. It took about 10 minutes to load up, would do things at a snail's pace, had an outdated windows program, and had a whopping 400 megabytes of hard drive space. As a point of reference, that was three computers ago, and I still have my third one on hand, though it is far too slow to use anymore. I believe it was 2002 when, in response to a question someone was asked about how they spend their time, “hang out on myspace” was one a part of their answer. As I was getting more used to the internet and had a full time job at a fast food place, I decided to have my friend build me a computer. Once I figured out how to connect my computer to the internet through the phone lines (much to the annoyance of my grandparents), I checked out this myspace thing I heard about. As pretty much everyone knows, it most certainly is a place where people can go online and hang out. It's pretty much an internet version of you: an advertisement of your pictures, interests, and everything you're about. Back then, much like AOL before it, it was not taboo to meet people online. To this day, I have three friends who I met online. As most people were not too internet savvy, linking to other sites and videos was not so easy, so people rarely did so. Mostly, you would just write letters back and forth, or if they lived too far away, you avoided long distance phone charges (cell phones were not so great back then either, as most of you remember) and simply chatted on AIM (AOL Instant Messenger). Through the years, I used the internet more and more, but I was not as drawn to my computer as much as I am these days. Again, the internet was not what it is today, or if it was, I still did not know how to use it.
In my perception, the social networking craze, along with facebook, really took over people's lives over the last four years or so (I do realize that is has been around longer than that, but it used to only be for college students, and I was not one at the time). These days, we are constantly bombarded with information on anything and everything. It's really easy to send links to friends on other sites. Facebook ingeniously figured out a way for people to share information with countless people all at once via the news feed. Depending on the number of friends you have, you can likely see a new post every single minute of the day. No matter how trivial, there's always something new to see. It's also really great because it's really easy to keep up with the day to day lives of those we might not otherwise see, such as friends and loved ones who live great distances away. Also, instead of trying to email a couple of pictures at a time, we can upload a seemingly infinite number of them and share with people via said news feed or by simply “tagging” them, which is quite convenient. On the flip side, social networking sites make us less likely to spend time around people we would otherwise see on a fairly regular basis. Here's where the bad starts.
Part 2: Losing Ourselves
At best, sites like that and the immediacy of the internet can be wonderful tools for keeping in touch, finding out about subjects of interest, and learning. At worst, and that's where we're headed, it can actually get in the way of life and make us lose the ability to actually live.
Thanks to the internet, there is an unimaginable amount of information at our fingertips. In mere seconds, I can find out the important dates on World War II, look up what the number one song was during the week of my birth, you name it. In a sense though, we have no need to actually know anything anymore because we can just look it up, use the information to our ends, and forget about it all over again. A lot of people I know feel validated in arguing points that they looked up but don't necessarily know. Living under the assumption that you're smart because you can look things up online is the equivalent to thinking you can beat everyone up because you carry a gun.
People spend so much less time with other people these days that actual social interaction is an event in itself. When people go out, they frequently take their cameras (or cell phones with cameras) and post about every little thing they do. Much more often, people opt to sit at home and socialize through their computers. It's not entirely bad, because some of my friends will post news articles of interest that I might not have otherwise seen, but more often than not, we get to see what people are doing on farmville type games (until we learn how to block that crap), get subjected to countless internet memes (though I have to admit that some of them are funny), or read about how they're stuck in traffic or buying a new pair of shoes.
We are forgetting how to communicate with each other without a computer or phone as the go between. Even with phones, people rarely talk on them anymore, but instead choose to send text messages back and forth. Quite often, I hear the excuse that texting is more to the point, freeing us from having to make small talk or hearing about non-essentials. I find that to be insulting. In essence, they are saying “I want to be connected with you, but I don't want to deal with you.” By being constantly connected to those we know by way of technology, it has become next to impossible to make connections with new people by chance. People are so wrapped up in their connections, that much of the time their attention is not even on the task or place at hand. Think about how many times you've been in a public place and seen countless people either engaged on phone conversations or texting, often times even when they're in a situation in which they need to talk to the person in front of them or, you know, drive their fucking car. Years of retail work have made me altogether dismiss a person as not worth knowing if they stay on their phone while being checked out in a line. If it's an important phone call, then they should not be shopping, and if it's not, they imply that the checkout person is beneath them and not worth respecting. I rarely use my phone in public, and I never use my phone when dealing with people in real life. Which brings up another point. On those rare occasions that people actually agree on a time and place to meet, many never fully participate in those experiences; they check status updates, see what others are up to, send and respond to texts, and altogether cheapen the experience in which they are halfheartedly engaged. We have become addicted to instant gratification and no longer have the attention spans to participate in idealistic, enriching conversations. This is not the case with everyone, but I am finding fewer and fewer exceptions as time goes on.
Spontaneity is all but dead anymore. Think of the last time you called someone at random and asked them to do something. If, in fact, you did something like that, how often were you turned down for a reason that you considered to be something of a cop-out? “Who all is going?” “Did you make an event?” “I'd better not; I stayed up late last night.” Social networking sites perpetuate hermitic tendencies. We have become little lab rats, self-deprived and scared of stimuli, shocked to the core if someone tries to take us out of our routines and comfort zones, and as a result, we will lose the ability to really live. I remember a Simpsons episode where Marge was trying to get the kids to do yard work, a request they refused. When taken to something like an arcade (it has been a long time since I have seen it), they were excited at the prospect of playing the yard work simulator video game. That is a perfect metaphor for what our lives are becoming. We are living through technology instead of through direct experience, and we are becoming less human on account of it. We are at risk of losing the very humanity to which we are so desperate to stay connected.
My challenge to you, dear reader, is to not spend so much time on the internet (yes, I realize that this blog is posted there) and spend more time in the presence of the people you know, and not just at some pre-planned party or night club. Go to a museum with someone, engage in philosophical discussion, start a book group, join a band, whatever, but don't let the internet be your means of communicating with the world around you. Certainly keep your hobbies and your needs for alone time met, but try to find a good balance between the extremes of being an empty socialite and a shut-in. A profile will never laugh with you, a skype conversation can never hug you, and no matter how personal a status update, it is a cold, removed fact to the reader. Go out and live while you still have a chance.
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