Paranoia in the Digital World

Recently I've been wondering just exactly what I'm doing with services like Twitter. I broadcast each and every little stupid thought I have, and I'm starting to worry that my quirky sense of humor is killing my respectability as a writer. What does the world in which we can tweet our thoughts at any given moment, or post them as our Facebook status, mean for our futures?

I'd like to think that as the masses glom onto the trend, they will be more forgiving of people saying stupid things years before online when they are voting for our politicians, but you never know how things will play out. While I've been skeptical of just how much of myself I put out there lately, Nick Gates has always worried about that. His views on technology seem to be much more extreme then mine, so I though we could have an interesting conversation. Maybe I'm getting in way too deep and will be wearing a tinfoil hat by the end of this. We'll see.

Alex: So, you were on Twitter awhile ago, right? But you deleted all of your tweets after having sent them?

Nick: I'll let our current usage of Google Wave serve as a good example as to the type of emerging technologies that exist today. Right now, I am talking to you via Google Wave and you can see the slowness of my typing and all of my grammatical errors in real time. That is fucking crazy.

Twitter is a means of mass communication and is a fantastic tool for the average person living in the twenty-first century. We can keep track of people's lives by the minute. That is absurd. Yes, I did delete my tweets, mainly because they were only replies to people that I followed, but also because as high a standard as I hold myself to as a human being, I'm not that great a person as much as I'd like to think I am. I can say some stupid shit at times. Twitter tracks all of that stupid brain dump. I brought up the issue of our tweets being stored on a server.

That is admittedly a little paranoid, but think about it: we are cataloguing our lives, whether or not it's being stored. I have mixed feelings about real-time status updating as applied on Twitter. Is it good? Is it bad? I don't know. When does our quest for the next best technology end? When can people be satiated? I don't know, anything beyond where we are today seems completely superfluous. What do you think, Alex? I follow your life on the hour and I don't even know you. I see pictures of you with your daughter, and you're not even a part of my life. It's weird.

Alex: It's the first step towards us becoming robots, right? Sounds like a joke, but as location and physicality become pointless in making connections and becoming friends with people, aren't we essentially living our lives more and more through the digital world? I'm just not sure where that could lead. To me, it has helped immensly. I'm not some sad loner, but there are very few people in my tiny little town that share all of my interests.

I was pretty creeped out about getting too close with online friends years ago, but I've sort of become comfortable with it. I joined a street team for one of my favorite bands, The Mars Volta, back in 2004. On the forums of that site were where I met the first people that I have never met in real life but would come to call friends. I've still never met these people in real life, but they know just as much about me as my real life friends. Hell, I started this whole website with them.

Do you think this sort of thing can only turn negative? I tend to think it is just removing the notion of location even more than transportation ever has.

Nick: I don't think that what we are doing right now, not even knowing each other, is at all the best thing in the world. I tweeted that it was my birthday a week or so ago, but what if it wasn't? What if I wasn't turning 16? What if I'm not a kid?

Online is the single best and single worst thing that could ever happen to us. It puts us more in contact with the world around us and simultaneously removes us from the world around us. It gives loners an avenue to have a life, and also completely helps in isolating themselves from their real-life peers. Which brings me to one of my points: isn't anything beyond where we currently are today completely unnecessary?

I'm pretty happy with the comforts our lives allow us nowadays, and I've grown up in this world. Most of the people in my life don't even think about this shit like I do. Why is there the constant quest for the newest technology? It gives us something to strive for for sure, but when does luxury become hindrance? Do you think we'll ever reach a point where enough-is-enough?

This type of communication is not a negative, but it's most certainly not a positive. At the same time, I don't know what I would do without the Internet, for as much as I sort of bemoan the idea of furthering the progression of these technologies, It's such a fully ingratiated part of my life. I can say that I sympathize with the commodities allowed to us in daily existence more than other people of my age can, but that's not saying much . I have no reference point for life beyond what it is today. It isn't a negative on who I am as a person, but going forward, it just may be. Time'll tell.

Alex: I guess that's the best I can say. I almost agree with you that I am comfortable with the convienences we currently have, but I'm not the one who will make the technological breakthrough that no one living today can even fathom. Only recently has a big push started to put all patient information online so that if you are traveling and get sick, the doctor you are taken to can easily learn of any allergies to medication of other valuable information. It's that sort of thing that will save lives, and will only be improved upon by advances in communication technology.

Not to take this thing too out of control, but if we sit on our laurels now, what happens in thousands or millions of years? If we haven't advanced to the point where we can reach parts of space that have other habitable planets, then we'll just die off with our planet. Yeah, that is the extreme example, but it's just a thought. Reigning this back in, I'm interested by whether or not ease of communication will break down our societal norms.

I've made jokes I'm not proud of. I've joked around with people that they are pedophiles, when in reality that disgusts me to no end. And as this sort of thing becomes normal, and we accept that everyone has said terrible things like that, does society as a whole click down a notch morally? I mean, 20 years ago, if a political candidate made a rape joke, would we elect him? Well, we recently elected Al Franken despite his opponent's attempt to smear him with information about a rape joke he suggested during a Saturday Night Live meeting with the other writers.

I guess I'm asking, does all of this mean that DEVO was right? We will begin slowly de-evolving from this point on?

Nick: Broadening the scope back out for a second, de-evolution is not a bad thing. I have no reservations in saying that there are other planets out there, and that eventually we are going to reach a limit, society on Earth is going to implode on itself from technological advancement, and the human race is likely going to die.

That's okay. If the universe really is as we believe it is, and it's insane to think that there isn't anything out there, then we are part of the natural course of things. We strive for sustainability and continuing our race because we are all that we know. It's a scary thought to think society will reach it's breaking point, but that's just how it is. I'm afraid of accepting it, but it only seems natural, right?

Now, reigning this discussion back in, let's make mention of games, so as for me to provide an example of what I mean when I say that I hope technology doesn't reach far beyond where it is now. Graphics look good, right? Shit looks pretty. And yet it'll go beyond that. We keep pushing technology because it is the natural thing to do. I don't begrudge us for doing that, but I kind of wish we didn't.

But here's a question: do you think there is a limit? At what point does technological advancement reach a standstill, if ever? Do you think that there'll be a point, a thousand years from now, when we just say to ourselves, "Fuck, we've done all we can" and that then society will stop advancing? Is there an end to technological evolution? Is there a technology that is beyond material feasability?

Alex: No. Like I said before, I can't fathom where things will go, but technology will never stop advancing. I sort of expected this to be more of a discussion of the Internet, social media, and it's effect on society as it is today and in the future of the generations of humans that exist today, but let's blow this all the way out and end with a bang.

What is the logical conclusion? Well, either we stop and say we've got no where else to go, and then die with the planet, or we enter the realms of sci-fi movies. We travel to another planet to live, we transcend our mortal bodies, or we completely fuck something up and kill everyone. The most feasible of all of these scenarios to our minds right now is the very first, and the very last options. But who's to say how it will all play out, right? Which of those examples do you see playing out, or do you think something entirely different will happen?

Nick: We might as well just ask- what is the meaning of life? I don't give a shit personally. I don't even want to think about what exists beyond my ninety years on this planet. Any scenario beyond what it is today is unfathomable to me, just as I'm sure it was to the people from five-hundred years ago. So let's do ourselves a favor and reign this thing back in for a few final words, eh?

Alex: Oh, first. Obligatory reference to the meaning of life and everything being 42. Alright, back to your point.

Nick: I was trying to make a point as to just how absurd this conversation has gotten. So let us talk about the societal implications of the Internet, put our closing thoughts down and leave it at that.

I'm scared of what the digital world means for us. It's always at the back of my mind. And yet, I use Twitter freely, just as anybody else would. Ultimately, I feel that technology is great as is, but I know it's going more incredible places and accept that. I think that a healthy dose of paranoia in the digital age is good for an individual. People should certainly be more aware of what they are putting out into the vast domain of the Internet, but we do also have to take a step back and just live life at a point, whatever technologies that entails using.

It's a cop out answer, but we have to reach some sort of healthy median between the commodities of cyberspace and the real world. As much as I blame technology for continuing, we're the enablers. It's up to us to integrate the digital world into our lives in a healthy way because there's nothing we can do to stop progression. If it means I can meet a nice person like yourself via a video game website like Bitmob and have a nice conversation like this, then no amount of jaded cynicism can take away the fact that it is in fact good in some way.

Alex: Honestly, I've used technology with reckless abandon my entire life, and didn't really think about any repercussions. It blows my mind that you, being 8 years younger then me, have thought more about it than I have. I'm approaching a year on Twitter at some point in the Spring, and have only now started to worry about exactly what I am doing on it. There was a brief moment in time when someone credible in the industry with which I am trying to work started following me, that I seized up and analyzed every single thing I said before I said it.

Nick: Just a quick point, Crecente is following like 1300 people, and I believe he is the one whom you are referring to as having followed you. Don't over-analyze the fact that he followed you at one point. What is up with those people that follow over 1000 people? That is what most concerns me. I spend an unhealthy amount of time reading Twitter on my phone and I'm following about 110 people. I can't imagine what type of lives people lead where they follow over 1000. Stuff like that is what scares me, is the amount of time where we're always connected.

Alex: Yeah, I'm not over-analyzing it, just saying that it was the first thing that gave me pause. And I think those people don't actually use Twitter correctly at all. They follow people just so that they get reciprocated follows, but they probably don't read any of their tweets, or bother to even read their replies. They use it as a marketing tool, and I think that defeats the entire purpose.

Either way, I was simply using him as an example that it kind of scared me how I didn't question what I was putting out there until I thought for a brief amount of time that someone that could make or break my career was reading it. I think that people younger then me, with apparent exception for you, think even less about this stuff. While I still don't go to the level you do that we would be comfortable halting technological advances where they are now, you've certainly helped me stop to think about how I use technology. Which is probably something everyone should do.

Nick: Glad I could help. Let me just say that that is a perfect example. What if an employer who I am trying to get a job from ten years from now searches 'Nick Gates blog' in Google and finds some blog I forgot about wherein I call their corporation a bunch of lazy bullshitters, even though they have now improved with time?

They're not going to want to hire me. I sign up for websites and give them my email address with reckless abandon, and thinking back, that gives me pause. I cannot remember every place that I have ever given my email address out to or signed up to, and that concerns me. Did I say something stupid when I used the GameSpot boards for all of a month a few years ago? I don't know, I can't remember. I doubt that that would ever come around to bite me in the ass, but it gives me pause. Ya know, what if?

Alex: What if indeed. Well, I'm glad someone thinks about this kind of thing. Thanks for the chat.

Nick: A pleasure. Even doing this conversation with you gives me pause. I'm putting myself out there in a real way to a person I don't even know regarding a subject about putting yourself out there on the Internet? Kind of ironic, huh? Well, have a nice night. We can all go back to inundating our Twitter feeds with info about our lives in the morning.