There has been a fair bit of discussion lately on the effects of publishing personal information on the internet, especially on social networking websites. More specifically, there is concern about the permanence of what we might contribute on a whim and find that it follows us through time. This may have particular consequences on one's career. We must now expect any potential employer to explore our social networking profiles.
This durable digital trail we leave has existential considerations in terms of how we are in the world and how the world relates to us. It also presents new challenges as to what privacy means, how much privacy we can take for granted and how we stay reasonably safe without compromising active and healthy relationships within a digital medium.
I wish to ponder some perspectives about what it means for humanity to be tethered to a digital imprint. This brings into question whether artificial intelligence will ever be anything other than impressive digital retrieval and assembly as opposed to how the human psyche operates. The psyche grows, expands, sheds, considers, chooses, imagines, creates and, occasionally, enjoys the mystery of inspiration. In other words, we are continually evolving which means a change of meaning or emphasis to the same object or event as we move through life.
If a person is blighted for life by an unfortunate photograph on a capricious evening, who is losing out? Of course the subject is in terms of meeting an external expectation, but so are the other parties because the person’s many other facets and everything they have done since is ignored. The photo or statement may be entirely out of context and we are all aware of how sound bytes can utterly misrepresent reality. Judgement based on hearsay and insubstantial evidence can never be valuable.
That evening of folly may have given rise to some amazing revelations or it may have just been a bit of fun. So what? Who can judge that? Must we apply make-up to the personality at all times to avoid such exposure? The government spends huge amounts of money giving identity protection to people who have committed shocking deeds, to be given a new start in life. I do not seek to judge that, but I do wish to compare how comparatively innocent and good-hearted people have no such similar protection. The fact remains that we sign up for it all and freely donate our privacy. But we do not yet have enough experience to understand longer term implications of our online behaviour to have set reliable precedents. Children often lead their parents in this new mode of relating and, therefore, do not have meaningful boundaries. We are all, more or less, making it up as we go. Possibly quite inauspiciously.
I was recently intrigued by a display at a mass market furniture store. There was a machine used to demonstrate their endurance testing of x-number kilos being applied to a chair seat over and over again. That is the digital replication of a use that would never happen with real human beings using that chair in their daily lives. They would sit this way and that, bump it here and there, sit harshly at odd angles and so on. The chair would be subjected to moods and variances of individuals. This is real life.
In some ways none of this is new. Village life has damned individuals since forever and the local gossip will ensure that certain transgressions will remain alive in the memories of others. But most people lose interest in what was, forget and move on. The internet might not forget and continue to open its filing cabinet to the world. At least, we are now capable of deciding to a certain extent what goes into that filing cabinet. We can only be tagged by other people’s ‘walls’ and photos and be searchable by third parties if we have engaged with the process.
As well as this being a very real, existential consideration, it is also a phenomenological issue. The human being attributes meaning to events, but, more importantly, the human is also capable of refining meaning and tolerating paradox. The networking profile is in danger of being not only fixed, but over-simplified in interpretation.
One last point I wish to make is timescale. While we may serve up to the world intimate aspects of our lives, suitably key-phrased and tagged, what will happen in the longer term? Today, we learn about ancient civilisation through the excavation of bits of broken pots and gold coins. As our literature, music, arts, knowledge and social interactivity is increasingly expressed digitally, what will happen in, say, a thousand years when this media is not only defunct, but untraceable. Will we be looked back on as a Dark Age because no artefacts or relics will be available? Presumably, a day will come when all that data held as bits and bytes of on-and-off electrical charge will go poof! into the ethers. We will be left with a few decayed, empty and inoperable filing cabinets.
I conclude that whether social networking is intra-personal or online, operating from a sense of self-honouring, ability to suspend judgement and, most importantly, compassion will go a long way. The physical organism has an immune system to discriminate between what is healthy to exchange with the external world and what is not. It continually refreshes its terms of reference by adapting to new antigens. If we employ the same discretion in our online life with the awareness of its relative permanent digital footprint, it is another dimension of the human being adapting to new scenarios and moving forward in an enhanced way.
© 2010. The above content is copyright of Deborah Ward.
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