07 July 2014

Is There Anybody Out There?

In a live version of "Stairway to Heaven," Robert Plant, somewhat obnoxiously, asks the audience, "Does anyone remember laughter?" (After the lyrical line, "....and the forests will echo with laughter....") I always thought it was an odd rhetorical question thrown in for effect, but I am actively wondering if people do actually remember engaging in physical laughter, exuded from an interaction with another human being.
This odd segue is a roundabout way of me saying to you, the reader, aren't you tired of just reading laughter - lol, lmfao, haha, jaja? Is anyone actually laughing when they type these things - let alone, "laughing their ass off," wherever they are? Maybe, but does it matter either? Our [virtual] lives take place in our minds, not our physical realities and though very real in one sense, these exchanges leave many confused about just how impactful they are.

Cyberbullying is common among teens. Malicious trolling and manipulation of others' online profiles have actually caused children to kill themselves. For adults, it is difficult to understand how typed words in a social media or even private context could lead to such tragic events - in their childhood, bullies beat you up or humiliated you publicly, causing the victim physical and emotional pain. Cyberbullies thrive on the emotional (or psychic) pain caused by their infiltration of someone else's carefully cultivated online presence, which is a reflection not only of that person's physical realities, but also their potential realities. Facebook has been cited as a source of emotional anguish for teens and adults alike. Users of the site may feel depressed when looking at the pictures and statuses posted by their cyber"friends." However, there is a level of dishonesty in anyone's online persona - the poster is crafting their personal image by adding the items they want you to see, possibly leaving out that they gained 5 lbs since Memorial Day or that they are underwater on their mortgage. For teens and the younger generation yet, the virtual persona is as much their reality as their physical one. The pressures of living up to standards in their physical world is only added to by the standards they set for themselves through their virtual profile as well.

Cyberlife has also led to a further individualization of our experience. The advertisements and pictures we see as sidebars and news stories that pop up in our Facebook or Yahoo homepage are tailored to our likes and reflect our past internet usage. Furthermore, the notion that power is vested in the internet user is common, yet absurd. CNN has an ireport feature, where the average Joe can send in stories and pictures that they find to be newsworthy. This is not necessarily a bad trend, the democratization of media, but the overarching ideology, that by commenting, posting or clicking, one can make a major difference, is silly. Many internet users take part in this whenever there is a political row or humanitarian crisis: we post our "opinion" or photos or a "solidarity" hash tag (#Kony2012), with ease and real purpose. However, to find people who actually dedicate time and effort to a cause is much rarer. The "power" inherent in choosing your own adventure anytime you engage with the internet is there, but it is of a much smaller scale than one imagines. The user-to-screen connection that blocks out the rest of the world does not represent the same level of engagement as actual interactions.

Occasionally, if you have been on a computer for longer than you needed to be and you have visited all of your normal stomping grounds, you get a feeling of real emptiness, of a loneliness you only get when you found yourself home alone as a kid, but there was no explanation as to where everyone had gone off to, with no idea of when they'd return. And that sense of loneliness is probably what got us to go on the internet in the first place. Comedian Louis CK has a poignant commentary on reaching out to text someone , anyone, while driving and feeling alone. He concludes that we'd rather get into a terrible car crash than be alone with our own thoughts for a few minutes.

I see this as a teacher all of the time; without the incentive to NOT stay wired, students will use their phones idly, so that they do not have to find something to occupy their minds - they can just view pictures and posts as they scroll through Facebook or Tumblr. This choice of passivity does not just stop with their "downtime" - it also creeps over into their interactions in class as well. The old, "what do I need to know for the test?" and "What do you want me to write," are even more pervasive. Open-ended, creative effort is further trampled on by continual focus on knowing certain facts - the standardization of education will be the death of us. The best way to get students to think for themselves is to provide them with crayons. For students who are not usually challenged in the school day to think, giving them an open-ended, but seemingly innocuous task like drawing helps to get their wheels turning.

But how about for young adults and older? How do we get people to challenge their lot? To go beyond particular conventions of convenience and comfort? When adults are OK with just perusing pictures on their phones for hours too, where does that leave us as a participatory democracy? Is there a need for such a system anymore? Should we even worry about anything beyond our own. private news-stream? Is all that is left to us the virtual persona? In The Matrix, Morpheus gives Neo the choice of going beyond the Matrix or to continue to live within it. What would the average person say to that choice? Would they want the knowledge of what is really going on? Is there a difference between the virtual and the physical reality?

The increasingly connected and pervasive surveillance state under which we live is being exposed more and more to us daily through the confessions of Chelsea [formerly Bradley] Manning and Edward Snowden, as well as groups like Anonymous. Have people truly chosen security, safety and comfort over liberties? Do we know what is going on around us? Has the state become great at pretending there is no risk with what they're doing, and in fact, their actions are doing everyone a favor by gathering information (about everything, all of the time)?

Since not only Every home, but every person, is wired, now what do we do?

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