Skip to main content

The Social Web

I have usually accepted new technology with open arms, however, as I get older I realize its damaging effects.  I titled this blog with the intention to take a look at technology and how it's affecting our lives, yet I haven't had the courage to cut the cord with several social media websites--these are the sites that I am most concerned about.  I am tired of living in bad faith and decided that now is the time to just quit them all.

I guess it was the fear of missing out that has kept me from deleting my accounts.  There seems to be this pervasiveness to our thoughts of how it is social media that connects us to the outside world.  I realized that the people I care about are right there around me.  I don't need Facebook to connect me to people I barely knew in college anymore, I don't need Instagram to look at the wanderings of people I hardly know, if at all.  The people I care about and the people who care about me are a phone call away, they have my address, they know where to find me and what I am actually interested in.  

Facebook, Instagram, etc... they are a composite of yourself that you want the world to see.  They are marketing tools designed by a company that wants to learn all your desires so that they can better market to you all in the name of you sharing with your friends.  I don't want companies to own my opinions any longer, much less sell them to advertisers so that they can target me.

This world has gone too far to consumerism and it is time that we stop this onslaught of mass-market appeal that is devouring us.  We need to reclaim our silence that, not so long ago, could be found.  We seem to be filling our lives ever more with noise and pointless noise at that.  I want to reclaim that silence I once knew when I was younger, without a cell phone, without a television in my room, without a computer glowing in the corner; I want to reclaim that silence of being under the covers with a flashlight and a good book, where you could be alone with your thoughts, and there was nothing asking for your constant opinion or approval.

Here's to reclaiming ourselves, not the selves we pretend to be, to finding out who we are again and enjoying life outside the flood of noise. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The End of Neeva Search

This morning I went to Neeva Search to see if rain was on the forecast. I had been up since 5 AM and noticed that there were quite a bit of clouds moving overhead. During a hike along a local nature trail I could feel the crispness of morning retreating and the mugginess of an oncoming rainstorm permeating the air. I never did search for what the weather was going to do; instead, I went to Neeva and saw that they were shutting down on June 2nd.  I have quite liked Neeva Search from when I first started using it about six months ago. I was disheartened to see that it could not keep its doors (tubes? ports?) open any longer. What they were doing was admirable. Google has amassed a veritable fortune through what Shoshana Zuboff has dubbed "Surveillance Capitalism." It would be easy to try and replicate that, easier still to lay down and admit Google's dominance in the internet search and ad-server realm. Neeva tried to fight back. The whole philosophy of Neeva was to have a ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Going Smartish

Going Smart ish Three weeks ago, I gave my Google Pixel 6 to someone else. Their phone broke and they needed a new one. I offered mine up as a replacement. I finally had an excuse to try living without a smartphone for a while. I'm now walking around with a Nokia Flip 2780. It's not the same "dumb" phone I remember from my days of the Motorola RAZR, instead, it's smart- ish . It features quite a basic app store in its Linux-based KaiOS. There is a basic— basic —app store that has a few hundred apps. I was surprised to find that the phone came preinstalled with a simple version of Google Maps, a basic web browser, and some email connectivity. These apps work, but they are clunky, slow, and nowhere near the user-experience offered on Android or iOS. That's a good thing. This phone sits idly in my pocket primarily as a phone or message receiver. I don't  want to do anything else with it precisely because it is so bad at other things. Now, I am reclaiming my ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Before It Started

Before It Started Before It Started I was once like you—waking each morning to an alarm clock, jarring you from sleep, trudging to the bathroom to look at your sunken eyes and wonder how long the bags had been there under your eyes. I was once like you, shuffling out the door to fight traffic to get to a job that slowly and desperately sucks the will to live out of you, feeding some capitalistic juggernaut Leviathan—praise be to him!  I had a person in the office who yelled on the phone about their positive Herpes results and "Damn that bastard!" I had a suitemate that took his lunch at the desk, spewing bits of food across the table between bites and comments about the weather that were wrong and a football game you either did not watch nor will watch nor ever had plans to watch where the food rests in crevices for weeks and turns to mold just the same as you realize you are wasting away and dissolving in this place.  I was once like you—listening ...
Post a Comment
Read more