Since my Social Network controls the interface with all of my contacts, and it won't allow me post more than 240 or so characters on a status update, I'll post here what I've been trying to say . . .
MELANIE is not sure she likes email, social networks, the internet, or cyberspace. I want my life back. Give me paper stationary, even if it doesn't happen as frequently. Give me face time with my family instead of watching them watch the screen as they carry on multiple online conversations simultaneously. Take away this temptation, this nuisance, this bane of existence, and make life feel real again instead of virtual. But, alas, I love all my friends and family, so, no, I'm not ready to give it up yet . . . what price, connectedness?
. . . but I type and sigh, type and sigh . . . and think of all those people in the movie Wall-E, with their virtual screens, carrying on individual conversations with virtual faces, while their real-time, flesh-and-blood neighbors, no more than an elbow's distance away, do the same. And the entire time, none of them consciously recognizes that there are people all around them.
Am I conflicted? Obviously. My vanity as a social person who likes to "have my share of the conversation (Lady Catherine in "Pride & Prejudice")" would be loathe to separate from the round-the-clock party that exists "out there" in 2010 and beyond, while my vanity as someone who likes to write, would feel bereft without my electronic umbilical chord to the wild west of the publishing frontier.
But there is also something in the back of my mind that tells me that this is not a good road we're all on. It is inevitable in its own way, and it does deliver to us the illusion that we are all celebrities, all the time, but a sense of loss continues to hover. Loss of what? Loss of time, for one thing. Loss of skills developed through meaningful pursuits for another, which leads to a loss of real-time productivity. The time I used to spend on handiwork of many descriptions—hands-on, real, touchy-feely work in which skills were acquired and honed a little at a time, day-by-day, year-by-year, and which enriched my life and the life of those around me—is now often spent catching up on the latest gossip, photos, rants, and brain-dregs that any of us cares to throw up there for the cyber-world to consume, and be consumed by. And it is no good trying to paint a pretty picture of this new reality using the crumbs of past productivity and euphemisms designed to distract us from the actual.
I don't think my life would end if I just stopped contributing to the flow of electrons. But I do think that I would feel out-of-step with those closest to me. I wouldn't get the joke; I wouldn't know that there was something happening this weekend that I really did need to know about; And I know from experience that others would feel justified in chiding me for being a troglodyte, or the proverbial camel with its head in the sand.
After all, everyone is expected to be accessible online, by email, social network, mobile device, and any other means possible to the known world and beyond. I guess it's a bit like the paparazzi for celebrities, convenient when you want the publicity, inconvenient when you want peace and quiet. In the end times, connectedness will be the currency, and we will all be slaves to it.
I'm not prepared to change my level of exposure to the cyberworld yet, and I certainly can't tell anyone else what to do, even if I wanted to. But for me, it is a subject that bears scrutiny from time to time, and you just happen to be witnessing one of those times.
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