The Secret Stead is the pen name of a UK-based writer and
Socialising as a part of human nature aids our self-discovery, and the Internet has opened up a whole new, virtual world to explore. We can now unearth riches without ever leaving our homes. Think of it: the arts, science, philosophy - the entire world is at our fumbling fingertips. Gaining almost instantaneous access to every culture on Earth, spending time on the Internet to get closer to our uploaded humanity can benefit even the most jaded of our species. Or so ran the argument given by Canadian actor John Lithgow's character in NBC's sitcom 3rd Rock from the Sun.In one episode of this late nineties comedy drama about a group of aliens disguised as a human family, sent to Earth on a mission to report and experience life, Lithgow discovers the Internet, and locks himself up in his room with the (literal) wide-eyed amazement of a child having discovered a treasure hoard of new playthings. Naturally it is an illusion; what it does is take over his life, and he becomes a recluse. Much to his celestial chagrin he discovers that, even with the potential to help him wrap his arms around humankind, all the technology does is give him thumb ache. Disillusioned, he runs back to the store and throws all the hardware at the confused salesman, complaining that being connected to the World Wide Web really meant we weren't connected to anything, but separated from the real world.
This type of dramatised Luddite mistrust, coming from a decade that saw the steady commercial growth of the Internet with the advent of the World Wide Web - exemplified by the first release of the Mosaic web browser in 1993 and continuing on through the 1990s - is indeed interesting. The decade was also an indication of its emerging darker side, with the first spam e-mail message sent in 1994. What would the writers have made of its second genesis, then, with it managing to penetrate every facet of our lives today? Research by relationship psychologists, who are keeping a close eye on new developments in our virtual sociability, suggests that one of the great things about social networking and cyber-activity is that it does indeed bring people closer together - in more ways than one.
On the Internet you can jump, not merely from one country to another, but from one extreme to another at the click of a button. This has been entrenched with the arrival of social networking. Twitter can be used to recruit young jihaddis to a cause overseas, or to teach old industries new tricks, like how Hollywood can get more people to the box office. Or it can help you find the nearest phlebotomist, florist or fuck buddy. Websex might be a new term for many of us, but it is a growing phenomenon among Internet users, especially the tech-savvy young. Relationship psychologist Emma Kenny, appearing in the BBC documentary Websex: What's the Harm?, suggests that although online relationships can be a force for good when exploring our identities (and even to help those older to rediscover their sexuality), they are also changing the way we behave.
So, if you were someone who used to be isolated, for example a gay young man living in a rural environment, you may not have felt comfortable expressing yourself, or feeling part of the community, the web can provide the opportunity for you to see that you are not alone in your feelings, while allowing you to express yourself physically and sexually, ideally in a safe environment with a trusting partner.However, as liberating as websex might be, it can promote people to behave in ways that are contradictory to their everyday lives. I am not a prude by any stretch of the imagination, but where we can now access information on every fetish imaginable at the click of a button means that as a society we are more likely then ever to push boundaries that previous generations would not have crossed.
If that is with a trusted individual that's OK, but when you're doing things that ordinarily on a face to face level you wouldn't be comfortable with, you have to ask yourself the question why am I carrying out this behaviour with potentially a group of individuals I've never met, and that I would feel completely uncomfortable doing with people I know.
– Emma Kenny, "Websex: What's the Harm?" (BBC Three)
From a psychological point of view, Kenny tells us that relationships need to be on a one-to-one level offline, where those physically participating are actually relating to real people in real time, but with research suggesting that more and more young people are spending 30-37 hours a week sat at their screen, being isolated for such periods can have long term psychological implications. The concern is that the degrading quality of human contact might subvert our personal voyages of discovery, somehow making us view others as more humanoid and less human.
The reality of the Web, and by extension its social media, is that it can dissociate you, so you feel that you're not having a real lived experience, almost like being with a television and not with adult human beings. The irony is that although we may think it is a private personal experience - just us alone behind our screen - it is possibly the most exposed, shared experience there is, with one click connecting your actions to millions of other people, even if you thought you were only sharing them with one.
Feeling desired, even if momentarily, may make us feel empowered, but allowing our bodies to be easily accessible can often mean we end up feeling without value. Although there is research that seems to dispel the popular misconceptions of casual sex leaving participants with low self-esteem and self-worth, with sex now a common commodity readily available at the touch of a button, the reality of engaging in websex activity has also meant that many men, and women, are now reluctant to do the work required to commit to, and maintain, a healthy relationship. Moreover Internet pornography - fun, fantastical and free - is said to be impacting the realities of sex amongst young adults, disconnecting them from real world relationships. Governments want to place Internet filters all over the Web because of the difficulties to bring it under parental control.
A third of all Internet content is said to be pornographic: with webcamming the most popular genre of porn and sex the most searched for subject online, it provides easy access for our natural curiosity. And as the numbers using the Internet for their sex cravings continues to grow, the influx of professional Internet porn, not its most realistic representation, has influenced the growth of amateur output, namely the unrivalled rise of subsidiaries such as the digital descendants of the leaked sex tape: home-made porn and new types of crime such as revenge porn.
Add to that the growing infiltration of porn in mainstream music and media outlets, and we are now in a generation where it has become the norm. With a cheapened sex industry churning its material out like never before, and hardcore porn of every shade only a click away, this is the first generation to have unlimited access to porn. Although no one can really know what the long term effects will be as a result of this insatiable appetite for porn, it feels pertinent to ask what this unchecked form of online sex education is doing to young people exploiting social media networks to satisfy their addiction.
One report about the porn generation found that access and exposure to porn is linked to young people engaging in more risky sexual behaviour. If they were using porn they were more likely to have unprotected anal and oral sex. In addition to this, there are claims that porn gives people warped ideas of what sex should be like; getting off on fake images is defining the sexual tastes of young people. Britain's senior judges are claiming that "the peddling of pornography on the internet" is a contributing factor in many cases they have to rule on. According to reports, hundreds of children under 10 - and as young as four - have been reported to police for sex offences including rape. A British court has recently heard a case where Internet porn was likely to be behind the rape of a ten year old boy by a fellow pupil in the school toilets, who was "acting out" what he had seen, while in America gang rapists are not too shy about recording their sexual attacks and distributing the footage.
The growing fear is that the subverted fantasies of porn have begun to impact the realities of sex. Porn-influenced views regarding physical sex are beginning to form the younger generation's expectations over what they look for in a sexual partner. Their connection with hardcore porn is causing them to disconnect from real world relationships, and to seek relationships based on what they see on the screen. Social media and a new generation of "sex for hire" applications help to make these distorted dreams come true. In one sense, websex has not merely become a facet, but a fact of life.
But as a subject too complex to classify into good or bad categories, one thing is certain: we need to talk about sex a lot more in the real world, rather than only interacting with its Internet fantasy counterparts, to replace the porn manual that is shaping so many young peoples sex lives today. In due time we may come to realise that the issue may not be over porn, but the absence of proper sex education in the real world instructing people on what they see. This means it is no longer simply an issue regarding safe physical sex (where porn might be considered a safe option by users who turn it into a non-contact sport), but one of emotionally safe sex.
The reality for many of us is that there is no condom for the mind in such instances apart from fostering responsible and educated netizens, with sufficient enough know-how to protect themselves from online misery gone viral, reaching out to infect minds in the real world. For some, this misery means seeing people as products; there was a time that Internet usage was solely about searching for information, now with the social face of the web, you can use it to search for people instead. It really is easier done than said; thanks in large part to social networking, the Internet has become one long sojourn of selfies and symbols of status. It is estimated that ten percent of all the photographs in the world were taken in the last 12 months.
Of course self-obsessed portraiture isn't a modern phenomenon, but the self-production of our narcissistic obsessions en masse and their instantaneous self-delivery to our screens certainly are; and no one seems immune to the psychological appeal of the selfie - and all its newest incarnations. As we digitally tweak, alter and improve our selfies, perhaps the real danger is that we start to measure ourselves against our own faked images, adding extra pressure to appear perfect in real life, too. Some people are concerned that the culture of selfies is actually lowering self-esteem amongst younger people, but that's not to say the rise of narcissistic behaviour due to our social media activity is completely a bad thing. There are those who claim the upside to such behaviour is that it might make us more self-aware and honest, a sign of growing individualism in society.
Narcissism is not a virtual trait we simply happened upon online, either, and getting people to follow or add you on social media takes time and effort. You should also be careful about what you share: Know that you will get Googled. It's not a question; it's basically a guarantee. Any interested party (including a date) will scour every nook and cranny of the Internet to conduct a scarily exhaustive background check on you before you meet for drinks. (Don't even pretend you won't do the same thing.) And if Google can be persuaded to forget you and your visual and textual antics, censoring search results won't alter the underlying reality that the Internet has an unforgiving photographic memory and will take every available opportunity to render you clickbait.
It's all starting to sound like a Shakespearean tragedy with a lesson in there somewhere for us to tweet. To share or not to share: It opens up a whole new box of moral dilemmas. Likewise, making ourselves presentable to the attracted sex is something we've always done in real life, but quick hook ups with strangers we meet online have added another facet to life (as if any more were needed) that suggests people are up for a quick sale, when realistically everyone should go out of their way to pursue and engage in productive one-to-one relationships and friendships that really do reinforce our self-worth.
A lot of charges have been aimed at the Internet's burgeoning social nature, from claims it has invented new sociopathic behaviours to reinstalling sexism, but social networking in this context can make you verily weep for humanity. It's true that selling ourselves is one of humankind's oldest traditions, but our whole identity is now too tightly wrapped up in our physical image. The most clustered of our cyber-forests have morphed into Amazonian marketplaces where we peddle ourselves daily, driven by a constant need to portray ourselves better than we are.
The peer pressures of selfies and the social media are forcing us to live up to an unrealistic standard of perfection, giving rise to such incarnations as the spornosexual, a term coined to describe young men who take cues on their appearance from sportsmen and porn stars. Pushing for the perfect physique thinking it will make us more attractive to our attracted sex (or make us more attractive to ourselves) casts a huge shadow over young people, however, and learning how to be comfortable in your own skin could become a bigger problem in the future.
But this culture of perfection is not only triggering psychological issues over our how we view ourselves. It has brought about an age in which everyone has the opportunity to become a bedroom porn star, and where, with the rise of young people sexting, snap social networking has metamorphosed into the perfect avenue for those looking for the quickest route to slavishly satiate their hormones - even if in the long term it is doubtful such online habits will answer, or correctly inform, their emotional needs, or the needs of others.
How Well Do We Want To Know Others?
Nevertheless, while the charge that the Internet may help to deform our view of others might stick, it can also help where it has harmed, or do both simultaneously. When two American high school football players in Ohio were found guilty of raping a sixteen year old girl, the case focused attention on teenage alcohol abuse and highlighted the increasing use of social media as evidence in court. In the Ohio rape case, social media both added to the humiliation of the victim and helped prove her case, while the crime blogger whose early and dogged research helped bring national attention to the case, had to fend off criticism that she helped create "an Internet lynch mob".
Again, the second genesis of the Web seems to harm as much as it helps the society that created it. Similarly, a growing number of people believe the rising prominence of an online social media movement is to the detriment of our culture, if not to our mental and emotional evolution. One study has found a link between angry tweets and levels of heart disease deaths, while writer, broadcaster and comedian Sandi Tosvig, in a recent chat with the Guardian's Observer, did not mince her words when she hoped Twitter and "its lynch-mob mentality" would "die a lingering death".
In agreement with Toksvig's extreme view would be footballer-turned-boxer - and Twitter vigilante - Curtis Woodhouse, who went to great lengths to track down the troll who had been abusing him on the social network site, by offering his followers a £1,000 bounty to provide the keyboard warrior's address. Once uncovered, the cyber-bully felt suitably embarrassed after a good dose of accountability, and Woodhouse confronted him on daytime television to make his feelings clear.
If you are in the public eye, I don't think it's right that you should be abused, your family should be abused, your children should be abused, I don't think anyone has got the right to do that. ... We don't know who this guy is and some of his threats, I don't know if he's being serious or not. I could see that (my wife) was worried and I thought enough is enough, I am going to put a stop to this right now.
– Curtis Woodhouse on Daybreak (ITV)
It is a case in point illustrating markedly that the show of celebrity has become all too interactive with the advent of social networking, and is perhaps not so surprising that some would shun its opportunities, deeming the cost to their privacy a price too high. Such celebrities, hard pushed to balance their public persona with their private lives at the best of times, may see social networking as yet another unwelcome window for the public to peep through, and one which is neither regulated by press agents or the media.
Needless to say, other celebrities have used the advance of social networking to their advantage; indeed pop acts such as Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga owe a great deal of their stardom to the word of mouth perpetuated by such channels. Depending on your artistic appetite for popular musical (fan)fare, this can be a bad thing for the industry - inviting a proliferation of underdeveloped artists who have been signed up simply for amassing a few million hits on YouTube - or a good thing for real talent, finally unshackled by the bullying tactics of big money.
Still, regardless of opinion - or rather because of such a tide of it - a meteoric rise on the back of widespread adoration is a dangerous surfing game. The tide can turn, marking an equally public downfall gleefully witnessed by millions as a pop star's life transforms into a glorified public freak show - with people commenting in real time as they witness the crash. Or gawk as they catch the fallibilities of fame with their pants down - as the Instagram episode with actor James Franco has shown. He is not the first man in his mid-thirties to try and chat up a seventeen year old girl across the Atlantic, and though he may not have crossed any legal British boundaries - apart from those of taste and discretion - Franco's flirtation fiasco highlights how we magnify the fools we make of ourselves in an expanded bubble. Especially when it unceremoniously bursts in our faces.
Social networking spheres can be tricky places filled with public fails, and therefore may also perform as the definitive cautionary tale for modern times. It certainly brings a type of transparency to the table governments have found uncomfortable, and which media moguls have had to embrace. We live in a world where a huge slice of the population has the capacity to shoot video and pictures on their phone and share it within minutes. It has caused an explosion of new information that didn't exist before smartphones and social media, and media organisations ignore it at their peril.
It's for this reason you'll have probably heard media organisations encouraging the public to get more involved with the output they produce. News presenters will talk about what people have been sharing on their social media sites or emailing in to them, for example. Such immediacy over public opinion, on serious news and celebrity fails that go viral, helps to show what is socially acceptable or not at any given time, providing insight on how, like any new gizmo, things can quickly go wrong with a virtual poke, or two. Like digital parenting almost, but not quite. Such aforesaid parenting suggests educated cautionary guidance, something Internet consumption and its pickings do not necessarily provide, but without which we would be foolish to consume of its fruit, forbidden or otherwise.
A strong reminder, then, that consumption, like our connections, should never be without conscience. For although, contrary to the real world, on the Web you might have your cake and eat it, you can also bite off more than you can chew in direct relation to the real one - and do it with the whole world watching you.
How Well Do We Want Others To Know Us?
Even without all these new windows to offer the outside world a direct link-up to the privacy of our homes, those willing to hack into our weaknesses have always existed. Warning cues and street signs aplenty direct us away from known dangers and bad neighbourhoods pervasive in modern societies; now we find them online. Alongside issues of security over having our private data hacked, and the proliferation of piracy becoming the bane of music industry and technology companies, policing cyber-space has become just as important as policing the streets and, like in the real world, some networks can be classed as "bad neighbourhoods", too, because they are designated places where malicious activity is more likely. The Internet's most crime-ridden network, Spectranet in Nigeria, is only one such example, where sixty-two percent of addresses controlled by the ISP send out spam.
Yet, distinct from their real counterparts, cyber-criminals can operate from a comfortable distance to exploit instincts that make users vulnerable - vulnerabilities clearly highlighted by the big data gathered and accumulated by our social networks like stockpiles of digital weaponry. These weapons of mass deconstruction, and the phenomenon of "social engineering", are behind the vast majority of successful hacking, simply by exploiting our clicking habits. Links are what the Internet is built on, and with social networking becoming ever more portable thanks to our smarter mobile phones, it seems those people willing to pick our pockets, not to mention our brains, can do so without even having to stop us in the street. And while major cyber-crime is on the rise globally making the Internet dangerous for ordinary users, it is not just the cyber-criminal fringe we have to watch out for: in Britain the Commissioner for Interception has said that police may be overusing their power to gather people's communications data.
It is for this reason that some people are of the opinion social networking went pear-shaped when the mobile phone arrived on the front line. Filled with powerful technology and innovative features, the mobile industry is growing, and with the power of its hardware increased fivefold, smartphones not only power our toys and gadgets, they seem to power us. It is as difficult to unplug from your phone today as it is to unplug you from your consciousness. It can invade our every waking, and even sleeping, moment. Finding ourselves strapped to our mobile devices may give us the illusion the Internet is no longer the harbour of solitary ships passing in the night, and that those periods of isolation Kenny discussed has been rendered obsolete. Not so, however, if the mating sites have anything to do with it.
Arguably, with gadget portability and social networking sites transposing their personal services into apps for greater reach, users are increasingly employing social media in the search for prospective dates and websex. Although the majority of these networks are free to join, the people behind these sites make money off the private data provided to them upon subscription. If you think Facebook is free, think again. You pay for it with information. They make money from the personal details and images their users provide in the name of expediency, putting them on public display for everyone to see (and exploit), whilst raising a myriad of privacy and safety issues at the same time.The windows we have opened into our homes are now pried wide open into our very selves. Instead of going where the Internet takes us, today it goes where we go to augment our frazzled reality - but at what extra cost? It is questionable how much quality time any human contact can have with our faces stuck looking down at a screen, and whether or not making the Internet portable doesn't simply mean carrying its problems with us. In the spirit of sharing and spreading ideas, it seems we may have spread ourselves a bit too thinly. For consumers the proliferation of more devices with a wider variety of features could mean confusion and burnout, or greater opportunity to act irresponsibly. It also means that consumers have never had more choice, and more power, then they do now.
As power shifts from traditional hierarchies to citizens, and networks of citizens, it is not only governments that are the biggest threat to this global cohesion, because as with all power, it comes at a price. Claims of survey results published in The Telegraph do not surprise: a quarter of men admit to sitting down on the lavatory to urinate so they can have both hands free to use their mobile phones. Meanwhile leading research from Ipsos MORI suggests that ninety-two percent of children in advanced technological societies have some form of online presence by the age of two. As their young minds grow attached to this connectivity, the technology talk parents will need to have with their children about the dangers of the Web looks set to replace the talk over drinking responsibly or sex education in the hierarchy of a parent's to-inform list. Modern-day teenagers have never been so directly tapped into technology, especially in their formative years - and there is probably more than one parent who wonders how much of it is taking over their children's minds, as well as their lives.
There has always been parental panic over something different our children find engaging. In an era of potent concern over the tide of Internet pornography, cyber-bullying and murderous memes, it is difficult to imagine a board game being controversial, but in the eighties Dungeons & Dragons was the subject of a sustained full-on moral assault from fundamentalist religious groups who feared its power over young minds. A BBC Magazine write-up covering the great 1980s Dungeons & Dragons panic is an insightful read, pointing out that any veteran player from the game's early years would today speak of its positive attributes. It was based almost entirely in the imagination. It was social. No screens were involved. Public perception also changed, simply because the predicted fears never materialised on a grand scale. But are the fears over new technology in this decade the same thing?
New science suggests that being online is a lot more interactive then first thought, and stimulates your brain in a different way than a board game or book does. What this inevitably may mean is that we will need to consider adding a caveat to the often made argument that technology is neither "good" or "evil" simply because it takes on our attributes, when it seems that some of those attributes are being overtaken themselves. Obviously it is how we use technology that ultimately counts - hackers help reveal security flaws as much as they manipulate them, studies have shown iPads and tablets can help develop the communication skills of children with autism - but its increasingly wide-ranging influence means that we need to be more responsible in that aim.
Without a virtual doubt we know that technology is not evil. It has helped us progress and lengthen our lives. It has brought an ergonomic understanding to the quality of our existence, but some may still go so far as to over generalise that all the cited ills of the Internet are really just our offline baggage we have brought online. Indeed, if we have brought the evils of our society online, and technology is what we make of it, then the solution seems clear, as far as safeguards go at any rate. It is the solution that education is the key; teaching young people how to use digital media to convey their public voices - and while doing so, promoting its responsible and inventive use as a tool towards greater communication, and thus better understanding between our species - is simply the best way to approach this new technology, plus a great ideal to have nailed up somewhere just to the right of our screens.
It might seem an impossible ideology to aspire to, but pushing the pragmatics of cynicism aside, not an improbable one. Young users of the Internet must be educated to question what they see and read, to limit undue influence, and to use it responsibly in the knowledge that, like sex and alcohol, the latest technologies are open to our abuse, and that they can also detrimentally change the way we behave. In the past, Internet sites have been criticised for encouraging self-harm, but this has been counterbalanced by the usage of new media to direct young people to seek help, and while studies have found using Facebook can reduce the sense of well-being in young adults and their satisfaction with life, those self-same studies emphasise that, despite the loneliness link, there is plenty of research to show Facebook has positive effects on its users, too. The research suggests it may depend on what we actually use social media for; the trick to any technology being the ability to effectively balance its usability with its usefulness.
This also lends itself in part to the technology we actually invent, applicable to software and hardware alike. Too much over usage by previous generations means that in a modern world mindful of its finite resources, we need to qualify doing something just because we can. The bottom line should be one where the issues between humans are the business of technology; we need to want to produce things that will be really useful rather than just a flash in the pan - like so many apps with so little aptitude - which then begs the question, how useful is this myspace matrix we have been steadfastly weaving over the last few decades?
It may not be answered with the dramatic naivete of an alien devised for a situation-comedy as in 3rd Rock, but it has to be said that the comedic situation's heart was in the right place: it is only through the best technology you can learn about the world and it can learn about you, and in return for the favour, you learn more about yourself. Pertinent to ask, therefore, if we were indeed better off before the Internet began to dot all our I's, or whether we have morphed, like the capitalisation of the word Internet itself, from an "I" into "i" - our individuality rendered to a small voice in a much larger chamber of echoes.
How Well Do We Know Ourselves?
It goes back to our sociability being a track to self-discovery; the advent of social media may have created a fast track to self-promotion, but is it the same thing? Those of us, who find that our online perusals give off the sensation our RSS feed is just an echo chamber - with all the likes, shares and retweets sharing the same content - think not, but is wanting out of the Internet's domains really the answer? Despite shying away from its second genesis myself, the irony is not lost on me that I am part of that echo chamber. As I blog on the subject of new technologies damaging our communication skills, I am communicating with one of those said technologies. So what, if originality has flown out of the window with everyone plugged in doing the same thing, in the same way?
Those of us who make up an individualist minority may want to ignore that future, and all it reports to bring, but simply cutting out our input from the equation doesn't add up. Social media is here to stay; its projected progeny will happen regardless, and it approaches at break-neck speed. We may have an individual choice not to use it, but we also have a responsibility to engage with it - because sometime, somewhere along the way, someone we know will. It is fast becoming a part of our everyday lives whether we want it to or not. A tidal wave of advancements will have occurred between the first part of my post on social media and this second one; universities are bringing in social networked learning, workplaces are asking for your Facebook and Twitter profiles, while we all watch Facebook adroitly adapt to its own genealogical struggles, amidst suggestions its lost lustre to newer incarnations across the teen demographic.
It is an online social scene that changes dramatically; one moment you're cool and the next, you're like so not. Things notoriously evolve at a quicker rate - which is possibly why universities are now lumbering to get in on the act. The bulwarks of book learning have realised there are few safeguards against plagiarism and information overload, with none of that information being filtered by adequate editorial scrutiny or fact-checks, so the uninitiated and the uninformed come to rely on wiki-bits of information that are far less reliable than the knowledge we traditionally gleaned from physically published books.
There is the additional fear that the age of Google - as great an invention as the search engine undoubtedly is, boosted by the nature of isolation brought about by the very Internet culture that enabled Google to take over the world in the first place - has it made us rely on our fingertips rather than our brains, making us all a little bit dumber. The opposite side of the coin has also been argued to say this Google effect has made us all collectively smarter, where wasting time on the Internet might even be good for you with the sheer banality of the web inducing the kind of fugue state that allows ideas to flourish. But what happens when we need to use that information on the fly, in split-second decisions when we don't have Google at our disposal? If we need everything to be spoon-fed to us in 140 words or less (like unfiltered granules of information presented in a mashed up mulch similar to the instant coffee we consume so much) otherwise we just don't get it, or we get bored with it - then E-readers are a great invention, too, but who's got the time to read what's on them? And how you must have struggled to get through this long-winded diatribe!
Conversely, again for those that have reached the end of their digital tether only to find themselves thinking: This isn't for me: I don't want to be an echo in some long optical chamber; I want life to echo me - could it also be the reason why there seems to be some small part in most of us that wants, on some level, to take our place in the social play of the Web? We want a chance to stamp our individuality through these channels that provide such high octane levels of interactivity. We want to be the one that stands out from the crowd, or to grab our fifteen minutes of fame, or to merely begin the day with a fresh conversation amongst the multitude myriads of "did you hear...?", which will invariably accost us over our morning cup of joe.
As celebrities lettered from A to Z will tell you, there will always be those seeking an audience, and those willing to listen, and the Internet has provided for that in ways unimaginable by all except a few science-fiction writers. Following suit, we want the Internet to spark off real inspiration and talent as a check to the dystopia so easily imagined, to help us contend with the real problems in life that are not solely about connectivity issues between human and machine. In an atmosphere where all colours and creeds are able to share their stories, and are actively encouraged to, at its best social networking has shown us how it allows for people to join together at unimaginable speeds to collect monies for charity or to garner global support and raise awareness to a worthwhile cause. It highlights that we want - no strike that - we need to talk about great ideas, and ideals, and how we can sort out workable solutions to the problems in our world. For we have many, and they will not go away by shutting ourselves away - even if that might be the reason some of us prefer to live through our screens rather than through our lives.
Clearly, when we see the deepening digressions of the modern world, it is hard to argue against side-stepping reality into a virtual one. In the United Kingdom, newspapers are continually forecasting difficult years ahead; they rub shoulders with social networks to talk of local communities becoming evermore fractured. The news would have us believe that in some offline areas of society, gangland youth cultures rule in the vacuum, where drunken behaviour and assaults are on the climb and teenagers murder each other and others with impunity, with prisons so full that even open prison riots are hitting the headlines.
Viewing our world from that narrow prism of dystopian light, it isn't so difficult to see why reality loses in appeal to the Internet, because in a virtual world there lies the promise that life is what you make it. However, what we've made out of the Web is the problem. Those who wish to retreat into the virtual world must know that we first need to sort out our real world, or else the problems will just follow them there. Unfortunately, even if we were to naively believe that the one thing we should keep virtual is violence, we have found that the virtual kind can hurt just as much as the real sort it has come to emulate - compare emotional abuse in the form of vindictive trolls, cyber-bullying, and identity theft, to name a few, all the way to murder. Craiglist is an online classified ads site in the mind of most, but can be a typing pool of potential victims in the mind of a murderer.
Far be it from me to over dramatise the excesses of our times into a modern horror story, but it is no exaggeration to say that when it comes to relationships with others and ourselves, we need to physically get out and connect with the world. If we try, we may discover that we can't help being sociable - just like online students. Now online university providers, which offered people the chance to study from home, are turning full circle by creating a network of bricks and mortar learning centres where students can meet and study together. It was a revolution moving higher education from bricks to clicks, and it has started to go back to bricks again. A classic lesson in learning, which like love, will always require real human contact. Neither grows in a vacuum, nor do we.
The risks in the real world may be higher, but are more obvious to detect, as are the love stakes; they ground us to any dangers a virtual counterpart might throw at us, with the kind of training only first hand life experience can provide to sift through the websex players and recognise love when it greets us in the real world. Unless we step away from our screens, we won't discover that real love doesn't burgeon in a classified ad until it is too late. Sure, some will argue Facebook love can be just as real online as two people who meet at a speed dating event, but exceptions do not make the rule. For many, if love remains virtual or behind some screen, then it is not real; and so often, when it finally translates to the real world, we are disappointed and feel we have been fooled by the recipient, when in reality we have been fooling ourselves. But what can we expect if we're talking to hundreds of people like they're all our best friends?
On the face of it, then, we have made of the Internet a divide of the liked and unliked, fostering a generation of Angry Birds flapping with no clear direction except to the viral cry of cute kittens and social media flash mobs. We have used the Internet to distance ourselves from our real lives, rather than allowing it to enhance us and to use the collective potential at our disposal to help solve some of our societies bigger problems. Or have we? A look on the flip-side may show that this glitzy foreground hides the real breakthroughs going on in the arts and sciences, which will continue to make our lives better, as a result of the information shared along these cyber-freeways.
Take the big data that hackers can use to engineer themselves into our pockets, for instance. The same data can be used by doctors to help save lives by the better monitoring of diseases, or be used to help fight fires, and may even be the key to preventing widespread hunger in the coming decades. It shows that while this bewildering stream of technology and its uses may make people angry, there is much to celebrate, too, as long as we don't confuse change with progress, or go to the other extreme and believe all change denotes decay. It is when we seek security during times of great change that we are most inspired by a romanticised past, but though we may enjoy believing in the myth of the "olden days" - and allow ourselves, now and then, the nostalgic luxury of harking back to a golden-tinted version of a past that never really existed - neither such nihilistic nostalgia nor throwing the idiomatic baby out with the bathwater simply to change for the sake of change is the way to broach our inevitable technological advancement.
A love affair with the past, or a fetish for the future, will have some influence over how we view things. New technology, until it proves its usefulness, is always going to be like the latest trend or fad, a dime a dozen, and by its very nature, built on hype. Big data underlines the point well; an over reliance on number crunching on a massive scale may exceed its usefulness and hinder its usability, because the phenomenon that has rapidly become an obsession with entrepreneurs, scientists and governments is based on nothing more than a vague term. Big data also runs the risk of sparking a cultural change where we begin to oversimplify complex issues by reducing them to simple numbers - not to mention exposing ourselves to the vulnerabilities of data security and the contingency of our information falling into the wrong hands.
To some, on the other hand, their logic would state that not being able to let go of the Internet, and all its big data gathering networks, must at least be evidence of its usefulness across the widest scale possible - able to simultaneously capture idiocy and innovation in its Web. Its second genesis is also a recalcitrant reminder that hype is only a click or two away from hyperbole - we are prone to disproportionate complaining. The fact of the matter is that we have a far-reaching technology at our disposal, so why not use it?
As for the end user, there will always be those who become slaves to technology, those who refuse to look at even a tablet computer, and those who will try to broach a liveable balance between the two. The third way, as with most things in life, seems the most viable - technology used in moderation rather than to excess, with times where unplugging ourselves from social media outlets to really get social is going to be more beneficial in the long run, not only to save our bruised thumbs, hearts and minds, but to bring some originality back into our lives.
It's the flip-side to the flip-side: When you feel you are losing yourself on the ever narrowing freedom highways of the Web, can you make the time to take a stop-over, and find yourself again? What is it they say about more haste, and less speed? Any modicum of quality denotes that we take things slow, and to take snapshots of life that really matter needs time, thought and the requisite individual human touch. Colloquially, this theory is known as FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out - a side effect of seeing friends and family sitting on beaches or having fun at parties while you are on a computer. On the other side of this line, however, is trendfear, a side effect suffered by those on beach sabbaticals, feeling anxious over missing the latest trends.
It may just be a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't, or simply a matter of taking the whole damn thing too seriously. Here's another slice of the Internet cake: Social networking was meant to be entertainment, after all, so when did it all get so burdensome? Could you even envisage deleting your Facebook account for good? The answer could well be that we all need to actively participate in both the real and virtual world, responsibly informed, to make them both a better place to spend time in. We need real life experiences to carouse the Web safely, it is true, but we also need to talk the language of the Internet and better educate ourselves to its highs and lows, with a wisdom that wants to learn new things and can accept the inevitability of change.
There may also come a time when virtual reality is merged so seamlessly with our own that those reading this post, decades from now, will chuckle heartily at the baseless fears experienced during these pioneering times. Well they may laugh, but make no mistake, the virtual world is no safe sanctuary from hindsight; the reality remains that unless we turn our focus on the real world, and drive technology to help us understand ourselves better for greater harmony, the Internet will increasingly begin to simulate the problems we shall mistakenly think left behind.
In my opinion this holds a most important lesson, and the real distinguishing factor between Web and world (however seamless the join may become). It is one we would ultimately all do well to remember, and it is this: That we need to realise a simulated world will never completely be a substitute for the real thing, because to turn a phrase, unlike the sprawling social networks of the Internet, the real thing is all we've got.
Published 7 April, 2014
