I had never really thought about how pervasive social media has become in life until I read the excerpt from Andrew Keen’s Digital Vertigo. In it, he discusses the evolution of a completely socialized society and how it continuously affects day to day life. While I was surprised to learn that the idea of a socialized society where everything was transparent originated as early as 1787, the fact that the concept had evolved from one of the physical realm to one of the digital realm were already readily apparent to me. Keen touches on an issue that I think is critical to the continual evolution of the social aspect of the internet:
All we, as individuals, want to do on the network, it seems is share our reputations, our travel itineraries, our war plans, our professional credentials, our illnesses, our confessions, photographs of our latest meal, our sexual habits of course, even our exact whereabouts with our thousands of online friends. Network society has become a transparent love-in, an orgy of oversharing, and endless digital Summer of Love.
This idea is both intriguing and frightening at the same time. Despite all of the warnings to be careful as to what you share and don’t share on social media, our society is addicted to the idea that we need to constantly share our lives with others. While this may be great for staying in touch with friends or even reconnecting with people from your past, it also has it’s darker side. With the amount of information that we freely give about ourselves and our lives, it’s becoming easier and easier for any company, or even any other person, to know what we like, what we dislike, essentially to know everything about us. One of the more unsavory concepts that arises from this is the ease with which the individual can be stalked. Not just stalking performed by a stranger or an unrequited love, but by government agencies as well.
Facebook is where we go to reveal everything about ourselves. It’s not surprising, therefore, that the satirical website The Onion, confirming Julian Assange’s remark about Facebook as history’s “most appalling spying machine,” presents Mark Zuckerberg’s creation as a CIA conspiracy.
What makes this so dang
erous is that the information posted to Facebook is out there forever, and the fact that we, because we love to share so much, simply volunteer it. We never think about the long term consequences of the revealing this information in such a public manner, and as a result, it’s become fairly easy for complete strangers to be able to know everything about you. This massive amount of sharing and social networking reminds me of a television series called Person of Interest. The basic plot of it is that a retired special ops member and a computer genius work together to help prevent crime to the everyday citizen using a machine that compiles all the information stored on social media, and integrates that with real time camera feeds as well as stored videos in order to predict crime and acts of terrorism. While this is (I hope) just a very good television show, the implications of it are very real and frightening. This reading only reaffirms my belief that we, as a society, must be ever more careful about not only what we share, but also the medium that we use to share it.