nicedice

In his article 'The Loss of Privacy', Umberto Eco writes of the new society being created within and by the internet, "Little by little we become exhibitionists, having gleaned that nothing can be kept confidential anymore and that no behaviour is considered scandalous".  And this, about the content that individuals voluntarily throw up onto the interwebs: "Exploring home pages shows us that many sites are set up merely to exhibit the site owner's squalid normality, if not abnormality".  The loss of privacy, surrendered willingly or otherwise, is not a sign of progress according to Eco.  That particular article was written in 2000.

In 2007, Emily Nussbaum wrote in her article 'Say Everything', "More young people are putting more personal information out in public than any older person ever would--and yet they seem mysteriously healthy and normal, save for an entirely different definition of privacy.  From their perspective, its the extreme caution of the earlier generation that's the narcissistic thing".  In the last year or so I became aware of the fact that there is a generation of adults alive now who have grown up with entirely new concepts of the personal and the public.  I realized this mainly through working with some guys in their early twenties for whom pressing buttons comes as natural as breathing.  My early twenties were spent romanticizing a kind of luddite-hippie-bohemian existence where everyone rolled their own and spouted poetry.

When I consider, as Nussbaum does in her article, my teenage self putting the fraught thoughts of my diary on the internet...-well it just would not have happened.  Now there are multitudes of folks who've had nude photos of themselves circulating through the inter-tubes for more than a decade.  Odd.

I am skeptical that these developments are indicative of a mass change in consciousness, but neither do I believe they are a sign of the apocalypse.

When walking with Pooder in the woods, it's obvious that the surrounding environment contains a plethora of signs, signals, and information for him.  His nose his mouse as he happily surfs an endless web of smells, sights, and sounds.

We have created a virtual environment in which we leave our tracks, claw marks, monuments, and excrement.  It can be a delight to decode and simultaneously an overwhelming tsunami of stimuli.

I'm aware that any misgivings I may have about the social media world are outmoded and pointless.  It has obviously 'already happened', and anyway--I may not pour my soul out on the interwebs on a daily basis, but ply me with enough intoxicants and I very well may tell you more about myself than you need or want to know!