Life on the Record

The last few years, and in reality, these very days now are defining moments in history. I’m not talking about the global financial crisis, global warming or the challenges of globalization. I’m talking about technology, the internet and in particular social networking mechanisms. Society as we know it is under fire.

The growing global subscription to Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, My Space and other such phenomena is fundamentally changing people and challenging the core protocols of our society. The most interesting thing is people seem to be signing up to share their lives, every thought and movement with gay abandon. Not pausing for a second to consider the longer term or even immediate implications of such personal disclosure – which only a few years ago would have been deemed recklessly dangerous to reveal. Of course people’s intention is to share private information only with their so-called “friends” but when you see that some people have 500 plus “friends” I wonder whether it’s more accurate to describe the majority as “acquaintances”. Even more troubling is the exponential nature of networks that enable your friends to share information with their friends and then their friends’ friends and so on. It’s like an uncontrollable virus of public disclosure. The moment you put yourself out there on the internet, no matter how tight your initial circle is, you must accept there is no limit to the potential spread of whatever content you post – and you’ll never know who’s seeing what. So why do people do it? Everyone is doing it: kids, singles, couples, families, celebrities, politicians and priests. Despite many people becoming slaves to the ritual of constantly updating the content, these cyber social networkers love the efficiency of having a mass communication platform to share with their “network”. They also seem drawn to notion of being a public figure, perhaps reflecting a recessed egotistical trait in most of us.

One thing that seems for certain is that our “cyber identity” is the only truly lasting one. In fact, our cyber identity even outlasts our body. It is now possible to subscribe to a service that automatically sends emails on our behalf, perhaps commemorating important occasions, to our family and friends from the grave! Think about how many times in life your phone number changes, your work address and home address change. For most of us the answer is “many times”. Keeping up with these changes in others’ lives proves difficult given the frequency. Think now about your personal email address, almost everyone has one (some have more than one). We are 20 years into the “email age” and there hasn’t been an apocalyptic moment when everyone’s personal email address has had to change. The likelihood of such an event ever happening seems increasingly remote as the internet becomes more robust and stable. So, for many of us in our twenties, thirties and forties our personal email is already our longest standing contact address of any kind and clearly will be in the future. For today’s children, their personal email address (or its future derivate forms) will be a ‘life-long’ identity and therefore the most important ‘branding’ decision of their life. My daughter Aria is 6 years old and already has her own personal email address. It is possible if she keeps herself healthy, she will have that exact address, that ‘label’ and conduit to the world for 100 years!

The startling reality that our cyber identity is the most durable has already begun to recalibrate our lives (or will soon). Gradually home addresses, hand written letters or even posted letters, phone calls, land lines, photographic film processing, birthday cards, posted event invitations etc and slipping away into history. Of course these are being replaced with wonderfully efficient contemporary practices of instant messaging, group emails, bulletin boards, links to on-line photo albums, and e-vites. Our identity is more and more becoming the one we’ve created online. How often do you ask for someone’s postal address as opposed to email address? While relishing in this new hyper-connectivity we enjoy with ‘friends’ around the world, are we becoming lazy, getting distracted or worse still forgetting how to actually speak to someone? Maybe not yet, maybe you still call your mother on her birthday. How about the youth of 2020 and beyond, will they?

Before you decide I’m old-fashioned, know that I registered the email address for Aria and I myself have dabbled into Facebook. I treasure the customs of the past, but recognize the popular realities of the future. As we adopt new ways of interacting with each other, I hope it is not at the expense of face to face meetings and hearing someone’s voice. I wonder whether people worried about losing the intimacy of human interaction when the telephone was invented in the late 19th century? Perhaps for a moment.

The concept of a “cyber identity” is more than just a personal email address. The internet and social networking sites are facilitating a new social trend of individualism. The mass communication platform created by technology allows almost anyone to act out their own sense of “celebritism”. Whether it is putting your video clip on You Tube, writing a blog, creating a vast profile and photographic record on Facebook, or broadcasting the real-time minutia of one’s daily life on Twitter – it is all fostering a “here I am, look at me” mass culture. Every one of us now has the communication technology at our fingertips to be the producer, director and star of our own broadcast life. The parallel in the TV industry has been the emergence and saturation of “reality” programs where literally anybody can become a media identity. Generation-Y’s overwhelming tendency to ‘project outwards’ is engendering a self-aggrandizing culture which is not conducive to a harmonious society. Some may argue the opposite, protesting that this hyper-interaction is actually bringing people closer, facilitating understanding across cultures – some of that is true. However, the velocity of this social trend is fuelled by a corrupted celebrity culture currently gripping the world. The media has made entertainers (I use that term broadly to describe actors, musicians, sportspeople, models and the like) whether talented or not, the cultural opinion leaders of the modern era. Gone are the academics, authors, philosophers, poets, tycoons, scientists, intellectuals, popes and politicians – unless of course they have celebrity appeal. So with this denigration of social leadership into the pages of gossip magazines, it is no surprise that free mass communication tools that give any Tom, Dick or Harriet an opportunity to ‘promote’ and ‘share’ themselves are being subscribed to at a mind-boggling rate. Another counter argument is these internet platforms create a more ‘level playing field’ for the identification and development of talent. There are countless examples of amateur film makers who attracted attention and funding as a result of You Tube, there are even child actors who have been ‘discovered’ as a consequence of posting personal video clips on the internet. The same is true of amateur bloggers, who have so many ‘followers’ that publishing companies have offered them book deals or a column in the newspaper. Without these cyber stars maybe we would be living in a less enriched world ……..

It is not unusual for the consequences of great social change to be both constructive and corrosive. With social networking sites we’re experiencing both, but we’re preoccupied mostly with the benefits. There is a reason we instinctively create ‘layers’ of information disclosure in our life, ranging from the intimacy we share with our family to the distance and guarded manner in which we relate to strangers. This instinct is primal, it is our way of surviving. We all seem to ‘get it’ when dealing with people in the flesh, it would serve us well to remember it in cyberland.