Friday, January 29, 2010
If I am Time's Person of the Year, We Might be in Trouble...
Time's Person of the Year: You
I have to admit to a great deal of ambivalence about the omnipresence of technology in our social, intellectual, and creative lives. On the one hand, it's fantastic! I can skype with people in other countries and establish and maintain connections that simply would have not been possible in the past. I love being online, and the ability to access any information that I could possibly want - and whenever I want to-- stil seems, to this person in her mid-life (who used to go to the library quite frequently) almost miraculous.
But it's strange and alienating to me, too. I am decidedly not a social person, which isn't to say that I don't like people, I DO! I am just very quiet and more than a little shy in many circumstances. Oddly, stories about how such people afflicted with similar social anxieties have found friends and a place to belong in online communities has not been true for me at all; if anything, my social discomfort increases in such places like Second Life and Facebook. I explored Second Life quite eagerly when I first learned of it, but it left me feeling puzzled, estranged, exhausted, and more than a little nauseous! Facebook was too demanding for me, and I found it a bit annoying. I don't know how I ever lived without email, but I resent being on-call every second. Sometimes, I don't want to provide an answer right away, and the expectation that I should is cumbersome.
A lot has been gained, certainly, but (and this makes me sound really old), I can't help thinking that we are losing something, too. Are the moments of my life only meaningful if I can record it and post it for others to comment on? What about that quiet moment in the forest that no one else witnessed? The world stopped... I had no camera, no phone... if I had felt compelled to freeze it digitally so that I could post it on Facebook, I think the moment would have been qualitatively different: less real, not as poignant, because my attention and intentions would have been altered.
Should we all be the person of the year? Did you earn that? Did I? Is it good that we are all celebrities, with the accompanying overexposure and insight into our every thought and movement? The abundance of garbage that fills cyberspace tells me, perhaps not.
The fact that I have received assignments from college students (note that I have used the plural) that used 'u' instead of 'you' and lacked any sort of punctuation seemed, to me, the harbinger of the very disintegration of humankind!
Then again, rock and roll was evil too, right?
I have to admit to a great deal of ambivalence about the omnipresence of technology in our social, intellectual, and creative lives. On the one hand, it's fantastic! I can skype with people in other countries and establish and maintain connections that simply would have not been possible in the past. I love being online, and the ability to access any information that I could possibly want - and whenever I want to-- stil seems, to this person in her mid-life (who used to go to the library quite frequently) almost miraculous.
But it's strange and alienating to me, too. I am decidedly not a social person, which isn't to say that I don't like people, I DO! I am just very quiet and more than a little shy in many circumstances. Oddly, stories about how such people afflicted with similar social anxieties have found friends and a place to belong in online communities has not been true for me at all; if anything, my social discomfort increases in such places like Second Life and Facebook. I explored Second Life quite eagerly when I first learned of it, but it left me feeling puzzled, estranged, exhausted, and more than a little nauseous! Facebook was too demanding for me, and I found it a bit annoying. I don't know how I ever lived without email, but I resent being on-call every second. Sometimes, I don't want to provide an answer right away, and the expectation that I should is cumbersome.
A lot has been gained, certainly, but (and this makes me sound really old), I can't help thinking that we are losing something, too. Are the moments of my life only meaningful if I can record it and post it for others to comment on? What about that quiet moment in the forest that no one else witnessed? The world stopped... I had no camera, no phone... if I had felt compelled to freeze it digitally so that I could post it on Facebook, I think the moment would have been qualitatively different: less real, not as poignant, because my attention and intentions would have been altered.
Should we all be the person of the year? Did you earn that? Did I? Is it good that we are all celebrities, with the accompanying overexposure and insight into our every thought and movement? The abundance of garbage that fills cyberspace tells me, perhaps not.
The fact that I have received assignments from college students (note that I have used the plural) that used 'u' instead of 'you' and lacked any sort of punctuation seemed, to me, the harbinger of the very disintegration of humankind!
Then again, rock and roll was evil too, right?
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