The Sense of Being Human

Last Monday, a comedian performed on the Connan Show. His humor was interesting but he stood out to me for his last extremely thought provoking joke - which was actually so shocking and deep that in fact lost its humor, in my opinion.

He said something like this:

"Today, with so much technology and such ease in getting online to find information, the time between not knowing and knowing has become so short that it removes the excitement and value in actually learning something new."

I am not sure if he realizes how many theorists have written about this exact concept of losing the sense of being human, or alienation (Marx), or anomie (Durkheim), etc, but his example is the perfect description of how technology has contributed to removing people from feeling alive.

To use a more specific example, and to explain some of the rest of his joke which he used to build up to the moment of that truly fascinating comment, I will use my own personal experience of just over a week ago:

I was hanging out outside with a friend when a moth flew by and landed on the wall right beside us. My friend blew the smoke from his cigarette on the moth in the hopes of somehow killing it or scaring it away.

I said: "If you are trying to kill it by giving it cancer, you might need to blow a lot more smoke on it."

We laughed and then wondered: "Do moths have lungs? How do their respiratory systems work?"

My friend pulls out his iPhone and in a matter of seconds we discover that moths breathe by absorbing oxygen from the air through their bodies.

We then move on to talking about something else.

The comedian on the show told a similar story to show the ease in learning brought to us by technology. But then he countered that by imagining how it used to be before the internet.

People used to ask these random questions like the one about the moth and spend days wondering about how they breathe. People walked around asking others, hoping that someone would know the answer. Some time later, they would finally come across someone who happened to put them out of their misery with a suitable explanation.

The people asking the question would feel so reinvigorated and so special because now they knew something they did not know before! They would value that knowledge so much more because the quest for the answer has brought meaning to that information!

And isn't that what it means to be human? To long for things and then conquer them?

Is it better to assign some shallow meaning

to millions of little things?

Or to deepy relate to just a few important experiences?

Could technology be dehumanizing society?

Ignorance or Strategy?

The same people who say that social media will free the world from the controlling systems of information spread, that social media will open doors for the people to rise and break away from the dominant powers of contemporary journalism, are saying that when someone gets fired for voicing their opinions:

"that's just the way it is"

It seems to me that social media is being used as personal profiling solely. It has become a pit of the most obvious forms of impression management in which people tirelessly administrate their image.

Yes, there are interesting debates going on online and people share their thoughts about the latest things on the news by posting videos, links...

But how is that contributing to the liberation of thought that everyone believes these social media can bring

if people have to constantly consider how these posts may reflect on their person?

Gilbert Gottfried was recently fired from Afflac for using a considerably tasteless statement about the Japanese crisis to explain a personal feeling.  Even though he made a comment under his personal name, he still represents the company for which he works. Afflac did not want to be associated with such an offensive comment, especially since the company has business in Japan. As a statement, Afflack deemed the comment unacceptable and terminated their contract with Gilbert Gottfried.

Afflac's extremely predictable and justifiable reaction received applauses for standing up for what so many people judged wrong: a great move in terms of impression management on the behalf of their PR department.

This only illustrates the point I made previously:

social media really is not helping people challenge the information brought to them, but actually helping reinforce the status-quo.

The boundaries between people's professional and private lives no longer exist. They are each day more blurred when so many portals for sharing lives emerge each day.

If those media were to just expose the truth about how people feel and think, then assess each comment or behavior by discussing and debating alternatives, then analyzing the causes to each problem or praise, and then developed new ways to encourage the positives and transform the negatives, these social media really would bring freedom of thought to people.

People could have a chance to change the world together with the things in which they really believe and admire. And if any of those would fail, these same people could find new solutions together, by sharing and working together. A true democracy.

But we all know this is way too romantic and utopic. It is based on the idealistic modern hopes that people will act rationally rather than emotionally.

Even though the modern theorists have interesting approaches in terms of the enlightment philosophies which believe that everyone has the potential to do anything as long as they are taught to do so, it still remains unrealistic that people could own up to so much responsibility and use the social media in such a democratic fashion in our society.

If our society continues to use these tools to punish certain behaviors without addressing the causes and understanding the circumstances, people will continue to reinforce the status-quo

by playing into what is acceptable and what will make them

look good.

How many times do we hear to make sure we don not have anything that could compromise our image on our profile pages? There are even classes, conferences, and books that teach people how to act and how to manage these information portals.

The most that people are willing to push against the existing realities can be explained using Simmel's theories of fashion: people will deviate enough to stand out, but not enough to where they no longer fit in the group.

Maybe these slight deviations will be enough to eventually reorder society through the media, but

as long as people are afraid to expose their true selves

and, by that, potentially exposing societal trends of values and thoughts, people will just carry on ignoring the fact that there are still people who thing about tragedies in the way that Gilbert Gottfried does.

Those issues will keep getting swept under a carpet as people hide behind their personal online profiles publishing only what people want to hear, and therefore, reinforcing the status-quo.

Whether people act that way because of a false consciousness at to what I am so humbly trying to explain, or whether they deliberately choose to keep ascting that way as a strategy to protect themselves, I cannot say.

Maybe it is a little bit of both, like in my case.

But history has taught us that big changes take big risks, and maybe that is for what we should be using these media, rather than simply managing impressions: for our long term goals as a society.

Ministry of Truth

Wikipedia today represents a lot of what social media stands for:

The collaborative building on of ideas.

Wikis are the perfect examples to illustrate this concept of sharing info and constructing knowledge collaboratively. Using this medium, people may edit each other's work to create (ideally) a more objective and accurate source of information.

We all can already imagine this does not exactly work as expected because people will edit things to promote their own opinions, to change compromising information, to manipulate the public.

On a video showed in class recently, the speaker said that reality becomes a commodity when reality is what the majority agrees upon and when who or what controls the majority's thoughts is money.

This reminded me of George Orwell's book, 1984, again. In the book, Orwell created a department called Ministry of Truth in which the government had the workers select, alter and create historical data to promote the totalitarian regime.

If what the speaker suggested about Wikipedia being one of the sources that reflect this entire social media movement of creating knowledge together and editing truth accordingly, and if we take his premise of people being mainly motivated by money, then

We already live in a world somewhat like Orwell invisioned.

The idealistic version of shared information ignores the fact that so many of these media are being used to advertise and propagate existing realities.

Should we rely just on what the majority has to say?

The Big Brother Watch

The control and responsibility of promoting ethical and decent values has shifted.

In this video, Henry Jenkins suggests that the developing technologies allow people to monitor the government and true events, exposing and eventually finalizing famine, torture, and others. He says:

"George Orwell imagined a world where Big Brother was watching us, when we instead, with little cell phone cameras, are watching Big Brother every moment of the day."

It is true that individuals now have more power to create and change things they see. But it is also true that some people take advantage of the ease to form groups and attract selective people to very abusive practices such as prostitution, trafficing of drungs and people, among others.

CNN recently exposed Craigslist as a commonly used tool of underage prostitution.

These media have facilitated and sustained this behavior for years. Many other websites also exist to promote similar horrifying practices.

The potential of the media is overwhelming in possibilities.
After the owner of Craigslist denies knowing anything about the issue, the CNN reporter asks:

“Why should I be showing you this if it is your website?”

Today, people must take responsiblity for what is out there. Now that Big Brother is no longer watching for everything and everyone, others become crucial players to ensure that only  ethical and decent values spread.

Freedom of Expression

A high school teacher, Natalie Munroe, got suspended for ranting about her students in her blog. Munroe expressed her discontempt with the school system, parental guidance and student attitude in considerably harsh and offensive terms.

Despite the hurtfulness of her words on an online medium, those on her side argue that she is free to express herself. Shouldn't social media allow people to voice their thoughts and opinions? Well, not everyone agrees that people should.

One of the girls interviewed by NBC said that what the teacher described was most likely true, but said that she should not have put that up online where everyone could see it.

Thus, how far do social media really allow people to be free to express themselves?

The first amendment protects Americans only so far as it lays several limitations. People are already not allowed to share certain ideas, but without the internet, people get away with venting their concerns as those around do not usually act upon penalizing them for saying something inappropriate.

Online, these words are documented and can be traced back to the author. Posts on Twitter, Facebook and obviously Blogs are monitored and hold people accountable for their opinions.

Only because Munroe shed the school, parents and students in an unflattering light, does not necessarily mean she should be punished. She used an external medium to express herself and, to my knowledge, did not infringe any of the limitations in the first amendment. Yet, she was suspended and responded to her actions on national television.

Do the media really give people more freedom? Or do they just control better what people are saying?

Whether Munroe was right or wrong to publish such comments, I believe stories like hers make people fearful of sharing their true feelings and therefore limits or tailors their true opinions. This defeats the purpose of having social media give voice to small individuals as these become silenced by fear.

Ode To Our Technocratic System

People today seem so concerned with getting more for less that they forget about what really matters.

We constantly pursue more money for less effort, more things for less money, more distance for less time, and so forth.

But are we forgetting to live through these experiences?

I recently asked a basketball player who was working next to me during an event what he valued most.

He answered: money. And the conversation continued as follows:

Me: "Why money?"
Him: "Because the more the merrier!" (laughs)
Me: "Well, what if I offered you 500 dollars for nothing and 500 dollars for a couple of chores?"
Him: "I would take the 500 dollars for nothing, of course."
Me: "And what would you do with that money?"
Him: "Turn it into 1000."

I thought that was such a interesting conversation that was soon interrupted by our jobs, but it sill made me think that he was missing out on the opportunities which that whole process could bring him.

He was more concerned with making money rapidly and easily than with the experiences he could have when earning that money or spending that money.

Our technocratic system is no different.

Technology has provided us with the ability to be more efficient.

People see the media available today as tools to make money, to learn a million things simultaneously, and to be efficient but they forget about the whole experience and the things that will bring them a more real and lasting sense of happiness.

The Frankfurt School would classify this paradigm under their theories of Irrationality of Rationality.

We believe it is rational to embrace the efficiency of technology but it may as well be irrational depending on our goals.

It seems so obvious to us that we should do and get as much as possible for as little as possible (probably because of our capitalistic mentality) that we might be missing out on more meaningful areas of our lives.

What we believe are our ultimate goals might not include the elements that will bring us happiness.

We are so often living with the anxiety of what comes next that we forget to take advantage of where we are now and immediately escape into the virtual worlds of social media.

Yes, we can talk to more people, follow more ideas and connect to more things through social media,

but does more for less, in this case, override the significance of face-to-face and hands-on interactions?

Or are we forgetting about what makes us human?