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03-07-2016
I remember the time when sharing things happening in your real life is something you would never want to do, a time when internet forums and IRCs are immensely popular, a time where you’d hide under an alias and that would be who you are, not your name nor your appearance.
But somehow along the way, we’ve suddenly shared our private life in the internet, like with a quirk of irony, suddenly it was deemed acceptable to share our entire lives to other people. Gone with the aliases, gone with the mainstream internet forums, gone with the anonymous internet relay chats. Hello, personal internet.
What is the Age of the Personal Internet you might ask, the Personal Internet is a term that I made to describe the phenomena happening right now, where people willingly share their private, personal information for the world to see, for everyone to see.
Now, to fully understand the idea of the Personal Internet, there are two factors that we must understand, one of which I believe to be the main contributing factor that ushered in the Age of the Personal Internet and the other that I believe to the be amplifier of the said Age. These are:
Let’s talk about Facebook.
Facebook is a “social media site” that is very popular right now. What is a “social media site” you might ask. Now, I won’t nitpick the term right now but basically what people regard as a “social media site” is a site where they can connect with their families and friends and share similar interests with each other. Those interests show up in the site in a form of pages, which are maintained by other users that post content related to that particular interest.
Now, why do I think that Facebook ushered in the Age of Personal Internet. Simply because Facebook is a site that encouraged you to put up your real name and other personal information. Those information range from educational background to your personal address.(1)
Which begs the question, why? Why do we have to put up our personal information in a site that we don’t know how it works on the inside? Why do have to say to this site that this is who we are and this is what we like?
I know I’m going in a bit of a tangent right now, but you see the Age of the Personal Internet isn’t just an issue regarding you as an individual who uses the internet. It is about our society, which is involved in this age. It is about the society which generates the culture that is going to be passed on to the later generations. In other words, this Age will define the succeeding ones. Thus, it is important for us to question the very reason why we do the things we do right now.
Facebook is also successful in ushering this age simply because it’s immensely popular. But one might think that this thought is a nonsensical one. As Facebook isn’t popular because it’s popular. We made Facebook popular. Which again presents a plethora of questions for us. Questions such as Why do we made it popular? Is it really us that made it popular? Is it the calling of a new age? etc, etc. I won’t futher delve into that since I went on a bit of a tangent already.
Thus, coupled with popularity and seemingly inconspicuous personal information surveys. Facebook ushered in a culture in the internet that is focused on the personal. From personal information, personal interests to personal thoughts. Thus, Facebook along with its personal culture created a hive of willing individuals that they can then harvest information at any time they want. Just like a bee in a bee farm.
The case with smartphones are slightly different, simply because smartphones in itself does not have the capacity to be able to usher this Age, but rather smartphones have this ability thanks to the previous point that I mentioned. Facebook and other similar “social media” software that can be installed in smartphones along with the smartphone’s portability.
Portability is a very helpful thing in the Age of the Personal Internet. With portability you can bring the capacity to connect to the internet with you and thus can share whatever you are doing anytime, anywhere. Which means that as long as you’re sharing your life on the internet you are essentially making yourself visible physically to the whole of the internet.
Now, if we’ll combine smartphones, facebook and the culture that it facilitated we can now understand the idea of the Personal Internet.
The Personal Internet is not about the internet and the connections that you make in it. The Personal Internet is about you, the individual. This culture created people who are willing to share their whole life to other people simply because the internet for them isn’t a medium to connect to other people but rather it is a medium to share their identity to other people. As such, the Personal Internet fosters a sort of narcissism within the individual. A sense of lust towards oneself through his every post about his life and every “Like” that post makes, makes him more and more enameled with this pseudo-love that it gives him. A sort of fulfillment, in a form of digital affection.
With that in mind, narcissism isn’t the only thing that the Personal Internet fosters in an individual. Another thing is the echo chamber.
We’ve established the idea of the Personal Internet as a phenomena upon where the internet diverges from about making connections with other people to making the internet about you, the individual. Now, this phenomena also extends to experessing opinions with other people. Since the Personal Internet is about you, the individual, and since you connect to other people with same interests as you. The opinions that you and other people within your circle tend to echo and strengthen. This might not be a totally bad thing if one is willing to open his mind to the possibilities of other opinions but it becames especially deadly if he is not. The Personal Internet locks the individual to a certain mindset simply because he hasn’t made connections with other people of differing views, as the personal internet is about the individual not about the connections with other people. The Personal Internet is an pathological societal illness that exists because of “social media sites” especially Facebook. I firmly stand against this age simply because it creates people who lust their own digital selves while fishing for digital affection from other people. It also creates nothing but echo chambers for people with the same opinion and it doesn’t promote a healthy discourse with other people. Facebook and other “social media sites” are a virus that are further cementing this idea of “being special on the internet” by focusing on the individual rather on the interactions between individuals. The internet isn’t just about the individual, it is about the connections those individuals make.
Stop indulging in digital affection, you are more than that.
(1). I know that posting these information on the site isn’t required, though having those fields there further shows the culture that Facebook is trying to cultivate, that every single one of its users are special, which is in reality, they’re not. Another thing to consider is that the existence of such also presents a concern as to why they need those particular data. I know, they have the bullshit answer of “These things are there for other people who might know you can then easily find you.” But we all know that’s just doublespeak. Think about it for a second, there are millions, if not billions of people on Facebook right now and assume for a while that all of those users filled up those fields. What do you think does it look like from the standpoint of the site owner and administrators? Yes, it’s a vast data field about people, and in a time where information is power. I wonder what they can and will do with that data field.