Information Age, Truth and Regulation

slowdive - sleep

    Why is it that internet culture has seemingly taken over the cultural zeitgeist? The easiest answer to that is that everybody uses the internet now. Social media yadda yadda, all that we've heard before a million times. We've heard the warnings about computers taking over the world and the power of technology. We've made many movies on the subject, in fact. If you've ever seen 1983's War Games, you can see that we've been talking about this since the computer's inception. The general consensus at that time was that since we have become a post-industrial revolution society, it was likely if not guaranteed that technology would surpass human ability at some point in time. Something so powerful is right in your bedroom. The literal ending of humanity. Now, did this actually happen? We still have time I think, but so far, no. The point is that something so easy to access became something of real consequence.

How did the writers know this ahead of time... it's kind of brilliant right?

       You could argue the opposite. The amount of opportunity and accessibility goes both ways. It's sort of the same argument of people who are pro-gun; "it's not the gun, it's the shooter," so they say, and in regards to technology I think that can be true. The problem is that in the pursuit of advancing the human race we forgot to question our morals and motives for making the tech we create. Was it because it filled the maker's pockets? Was it a personal passion? Or did people really think that they were doing something for humanity? 

    It's hard to say, because all of those could be true to some capacity. The capitalist part of society expects you to profit. The passionate part of you wants it for your own fulfilment, and the obligation to society, to everybody, is to help others, (I think that last one needs to be emphasized a bit more.) When we're talking about organizations, corporations, businesses, we view each of them like they're one conglomerate. One giant organism that moves together, but that's not really true is it? Any type of organization is usually built like a hierarchy; a pyramid. There's always been somebody who has supreme authority, even in organizations like WHO or NATO which are intended to globalize. It's not that leaders cannot exist; it's that every person is just as important as the last. So if you can't solve problems by legislation alone, that leaves culture and people's psychological health to change. There are general messages, sentiments, lessons, wisdom that can be taught and facilitated through social media and it's no secret that people take that very seriously nowadays. Just as the ignorant had gotten ahold of the pocket-sized megaphone, the virtuous and educated did as well. People from completely opposite parts of your country, continent, even the world, could discover others that were just as opposite to them physically as they were politically. How is it that you can see eye-to-eye with a stranger but maybe not your neighbor? You have shared experiences living in the same place, the amount of your agreements should be more than likely, and yet there's a possibility that you share more agreements with someone in another country. This does not apply to everyone, of course, I'm just talking about the people who are affected by it, and many are.

    The internet shined a light on its userbase and then moved onto the entire world. It uncovers people like lifting up a rock and finding bugs crawling underneath; if you're willing to look. If you want to ignore a person's transgressions, you can create an echo chamber. You can essentially censor content for yourself. You can block anything. Don't want to think about it? Blip. Problem solved. I think people are starting to catch on to this, because you can *sometimes* control the content about you, depending on how much gets out and who sees it. I know this because celebrities often do that, where their agents pay a service to take down information they don't want the public to know about (see reputationdefender). We've almost became paranoid about media manipulation now, so how do you even trust what you see? We can make educated guesses about people's motivations based off of data or personal experience and that may still never get a full picture. We can't go into anyone's mind, we can only go based off what they're showing us or allowing to be revealed. You're never gonna know with 100% certainty. This is kind of why I think people are obsessed with being famous. (I'm being regional, I can only speak as an American. I know people around the world hold a different view of success.) Validation is a powerful, encouraging experience.

    We want authenticity because we seek truth. We seek truth from our government, we seek truth with those around us, and we seek it in media. We want the world uncorrupted, most of us do. There is a human need for us to do the right thing even if that desire becomes withered down by a selfish or cruel world, or a selfish and cruel personality within the person. I admit that we as a collective are sometimes hard to defend, but knowing that reality and regulating it is how we move forward. I can say without a doubt that accepting pain as a concept was one of my biggest challenges. Acknowledgement of suffering is hard to witness; to swallow. Now that we have the internet its shined a terrifying light on all of that. Some things can be faked and others are horrifying real, and the responsibility of differentiating is now on us, the users. There is no Hammurabi's code in the age of information, but there should've been.

the writers really were like, fuck this guy

    This is a super weird comparison but bear with me. Remember Walter Peck from the EPA in Ghostbusters? When he came to question how safe their ghostbusting was and they laughed at how stupid and corny he sounded? If you're using super technology that seemingly hasn't been tested yet would you not have questions about the affects of it too? They made this guy out like he was totally irrational for that. I don't know why classic 80s cinema is on my mind right now. The point is is that this character archetype gets mocked all the time for questioning whether something is a good idea or not. Somebody says, "maybe we should consider the effects of doing this," and somebody else shouts:

        We have to stop looking at it like this. There has to be some standard, some rules to uphold not simply for the sake of having rules but by preventing a lot of people from getting hurt, institutions becoming corrupted. If we deemed children not capable of being able to drink or gamble would it not also be accurate to say that there needs to be certain limitations on the biggest platform in the world? Few remember how absolutely lawless the internet used to be. It was no man's land. It was like walking on a new planet, nothing had been established yet.

    Perhaps I'm making it sound cooler than it was. It was more vulnerable than anything. Vulnerable enough actually, to catch the attention of certain groups who saw the Internet as a tool, and it is. That's why marketing is such an explosive field nowadays. One wrong move, your reputation could go down which means your profits are down. The negative net outweighs the positive alternative, which is to hire a marketing team to help build one. If you want people to think of certain things about you as true, you can. If you want people to think certain facts are true, you can (to an extent, depending on how wide a person or group's influence is and what we're talking about.) Is all of this moral? Again, that's another point in the discussion. I'm still debating that one.

    So anyway, happy Sunday everybody. I predict September shall be a good month for you. 

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