Modern Society's Internet Culture

Response to Andrew Keen’s “Digital Vertigo”

“Social media is the confessional novel that we are not only all writing but also collectively publishing for everyone else to read” (23).

Andrew Keen, author of “Digital Vertigo: How Today’s Social Revolution is Dividing, Diminishing, and Disorienting Us”, addresses the impact of digital technologies on 21^st century business, education, and society. Keen, an internet entrepreneur who founded Audiocafe.com, supports the idea that we have turned into an age of exhibition: nothing is private anymore. What is the reason for our overly public society? The answer, according to Keen, can be summed up in two words: social media. The major and surely most obvious example of this is Facebook. Anyone can find a plethora of information about anyone they want by surfing the web, especially if you are “friends” via Facebook. Facebook makes it disturbingly easy to find out the who, what, where, when, and why’s of daily life. Although it pains me to admit it, I am guilty of occasionally Facebook stalking every now and then. But there is something to be said about my feeling of guilt. I think guilt is the initial feeling that comes up because I feel as if I am intruding on someone else’s life, yet what they are sharing isn’t all too “private”. As Keen points out

Like the network itself, our mass public confessional is global. People from all around the world are revealing their most private thoughts on a transparent network that everyone can access (25). 

My understanding of why people feel so comfortable with confessing their most private thoughts or opinions is because they feel protected taking behind a computer screen. In this case, the computer screen acts as a type of “wall”, protecting people from on the spot questioning and discussion, yet allowing them to divulge anything they want.

One specific part of the reading that I sought to better understand was Mark Zuckerburg’s take on loneliness and how he believes Facebook is the “cure” to end it. I believe, to a certain extent, that Facebook reinforces loneliness. Although we can carry long, dense discussions with people via the internet, we aren’t making an authentic, really personal connection with them. I think what attracts so many people to communicating via text or Facebook is that we feel less vulnerable than if we were to meet face to face. Yes, Facebook makes communication easier, but does it make it more gratifying? For me, the answer is it doesn’t.

What I found frighteningly true from “Digital Vertigo” was Keen’s observation that nothing is private anymore. Keen uses the example of reading to support this claim. He states:

Yes, reading, that most intensely private and illicit of all modern individual experiences, is being transformed into a disturbingly social spectacle…It means the end of the isolated reader, the end of solitary thought, the end of purely individual literary reflection, the end of those long afternoons spent entirely alone with just a book” (43-44). 

Keen’s statement relates directly back to the quote headlining this post: that social media is the new novel of our generation. After reading this excerpt from “Digital Vertigo”, I am more conscious of the extremely large precsense of social media. With this in mind, I plan on being the architect of my own exhibit of personal data. I’d like to ask whoever reading this if you feel like social media is becoming too public and if not, what do you find to be beneficial about all the personal exposure?

September 23, 2012

We live in a world infused with commercial culture, yet we rarely see how it touches us, and how we process it as it touches us (7).

Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University, stated the above quote in his book titled “Remix”. In “Remix”, Lessig, also the founder of Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society, focuses on law and technology as it affects copyright. More importantly, he raises the issue regarding two separate cultures in which society has evolved: the “RW” (reading/writing) culture and the “RO” (reading only) culture. He argues that before technology, we were primarily a RW culture. Now, with inventions such as iTunes, eBooks, and Youtube, we are spoiled with being able to control what we want, when we want it.

In “Remix” Lessig sums up the two with:

“One emphasizes learning. The other emphasizes learning by speaking. One preserves its integrity. The other teaches integrity. One emphasizes a hierarchy. The other hides the hierarchy. No one would argue we need less of the first, RO culture. But anyone who has really seen it believes we need much more of the second” (87).

I agree that our society is significantly more of an RO, rather than RW culture, because of our reliance on technology. While I do believe technology has positively influenced our culture, I also think our culture has become too comfortable with consumption: a product is there, we use it, and move on. The RO culture is a simple, easy, one-way relationship.

The RW culture isn’t as easy as RO because it requires engagement and interaction. An example that Lessig uses in “Remix” and that I found quite helpful is the difference between a lecture hall and a law school classroom. In this case, the lecture hall symbolizes the RO culture, whereas a law school classroom symbolizes a RW culture because the law school classroom teaches students to argue and most importantly, to respond. Drawing from personal experience, I have found seminars and intimate classes (such as law school classrooms), to be the most rewarding experiences. I have without a doubt learned the most from them and have formed closer relationships than I would have in a lecture. The reason behind this, I believe, is because there are feelings of appreciation and recognition.

How can we then find a healthy balance of RO and RW? Lessig suggests “in protecting RO culture, we shouldn’t kill off the potential for RW” (90). Instead, there should be a hybrid of the two so that we can find a happy medium. An example of this happy medium is blogging. While there’s the use of technology with blogging, there is also the action of writing the blogs. I find it important to at least recognize that we may become too reliant on technology to complete tasks for us that we can easily do ourselves (albeit, a little extra effort may be required).

Fruitloop Feminism

I decided to create my first blog discussing, well, another blog, named Fruitloop Feminism. I chose this blog for a multitude of reasons. The very first reason is solely because my best friend’s older sister, Claire McGovern, writes it. Like me, Claire majored in English. Unlike Claire, I am not an avid feminist. I have taken a couple classes at Santa Clara that have studied women’s gender issues and women in literature (truthfully because they fulfilled my major requirements and/or were double-dippers), but learned a whole lot from feminists such as Bell Hooks, Judith Butler, Naomi Wolf, Virginia Woolf, etc.

Although I have never had the desire to be vocal about women’s rights, I do fully support that women are becoming more and more independent and changing the traditional “men have to be the bread winners of the family” notion of society.  After looking through Claire’s blog, I have come to appreciate her viewpoints on the female politics and believe she touches on some very important topics of today’s modern world. Her posts range from the heated debate over birth control to the unrealistic image of love in films that most women fantasize and desire. Regardless of the topic, Claire manages to avoid dullness and uses her wit to inform readers on the controversial, yet interesting feminist related topics of modern day.

For anyone interested in reading Claire’s blog, here’s the link!

http://fruitloopfeminism.wordpress.com/