“Cyberscape” is not a term generally used any longer. In fact, it seems to me that no one really speaks of a division between the real world and the cyberworld any longer. Rather, people speak of how close and integrated they are and of technologies and ways to bring them even closer. I think a whole other domain of existence is quietly but rapidly merging with our “natural” existence and unless we are careful the result will not be favorable to humans.
Me and my best friend, both old-school computer geeks (about 20 years of experience; not as old as some but old enough to have began on dial-up bbs rather than the Internet we know today), were at a local chophouse-brewery and we noticed a couple sitting across from one another but also infinitely far apart. Each of them was gazing at a smart phone, jacked in to the cyberworld whilst sitting in a real-world brewery. Then it struck me: all our electronic, connected devices (netbooks, iPads, smart phones, etc.) are windows through which we gaze longingly into the cyberworld.
The Facebook phenomenon perplexes me and my friend. Neither of us have Facebook accounts nor want them. Yet both of us are on Facebook, against our will or wish. What is so alluring to hundreds of millions of people about social networking? I ask my friends and the most common, nearly universal answer is: “It’s a way to keep in touch with people.” That’s a nice sentiment but I argue that “keeping in touch” requires the ability to “touch” the person or something from them that may at least bear lingering signatures of them (i.e. their handwriting). Online social networking–or online anything–gives the impression of individuality, of discrete human beings behind the messages, but the fact is that nothing about the cyberworld uniquely or necessarily links to the real world. Therefore, you@Facebook is not really you; it could just as easily be me: simply give me your username and password. After a few minutes of studying your lexicon and idiomatic tendencies, I can begin masquerading as you in the cyberworld because fonts on screens appear the same when typed by me or anyone else. That is to say: there are no signatures of the human behind the messages. (Unless you’re using PGP or something, but that’s rare to never.) And the argument that handwriting and other real-world traits can be duplicated in a similar manner does not hold water because, sure, you may be able to duplicate my handwriting but you can never duplicate me (unless you have a full Hollywood staff of makeup artists and specialists and just so happen to be over six feet tall).
And so what? So what if the cyberworld connects but loosely and vaguely to the real world? So what if “keeping in touch” via Facebook is categorically different than keeping in touch by meeting a friend at a brewpub or writing a friend a hand-written letter? And so what if we gaze through windows at the cyberworld we’ve created and live semi-alternates lives there where whether I’m happy or not, single or not, “here” or not depends on my “status”? Aren’t two lives better than one? Isn’t it awesome that I can chat and message my friends all over the world, know what my ex is up to, and feel part of something greater when I join the Tupperware party? Perhaps there’s nothing wrong with all this… for the moment.
What I “fear” are the affects of the cyberworld on human aspects of living, like time. The real world has an “arrow” of time, or at least that’s our perception. During the summer, the sun takes about 15 hours to rise and set. A letter takes half an hour to an hour to write, then more time to fold, address, stamp and take to the post office, then days to arrive at its destination. A conversation between me and my friend over beers takes hours. Meeting someone and becoming their friend–a real friend–takes months. But these activities in the cyberworld either don’t happen (sunrise/set) or can happen in seconds or minutes. I think this has adverse affects both psychological and sociological.
Psychologically, we simply cannot handle or make useful use of the information torrent that we incite or invite. I can receive a hundred emails or messages at once, but how or why would a normal person ever receive a hundred letters at once? If one morning you found a hundred letters stuffed in your mailbox you would probably be very surprised and surely overwhelmed if you had to respond to them all in a few days. But most of us regularly receive hundreds (if not thousands) of emails and texts each week and this does not strike anyone as strange, probably because we can and do respond to them all. What is strange, to me at least, is that mass electronic communication does not seem to cause the kind of anxiety that an equal or even fractional amount of physical communication would cause. I emphasize “seem” because I think that the anxiety is actually there but we’re too busy to notice it because the e-flood never ceases and only grows larger as we open more windows to the cyberworld.
“How do the drops of water know themselves to be an ocean?”
Sociologically, I fear that all this “keeping in touch” is actually diminishing real human contact. Why visit people when we already know what they’ve been doing, their relationship status, etc.? For example, I haven’t seen my other best friend in weeks because she’s been swamped with school and work, but we exchanged a few quick texts and scheduled a dinner and drink date tonight. We will meet face-to-face and I’ll catch her up on the mass of changes in my life recently. If I was on Facebook she would probably already know about these changes and our meeting would be a mere recapitulation. But since I’m not on Facebook, she’s very excited to hear about why me and my girlfriend are moving in together. And there it is: “excited to hear”. What the cyberworld and its always-on, tip-of-the-fingers cyber-universe of knowledge denies us is wonder, suspense and excitement. These humans aspects and feelings do not translate between the worlds; they’re uniquely ours, real. Thus my argument is that the cyberworld dilutes the real world, denies us our yeast, so to speak, that gives rise to that unique pleasure of “catching up” with friends, sharing news, learning with shock and awe that after dating for only a month me and my girlfriend have begun to live together and we enjoy it very much.
Do I have a point is all this? Yes; it’s this: less cyber, more real. No matter how sick the latest iPhone may be, no matter how fantastic its apps, how fast or sexy the netbook, how pervasive the 3G coverage, how many people we can stay in “touch” with, we are real people in a real world and lest you become a Borg, this will never change. Instead of up-playing the cyberworld and the gadgets we fabricate to peer into it, we should focus only on how such contrivances enhance our real-world lives. We should think about and look closely at how the cyber affects the real and ask ourselves: is the real benefiting? If not, then the cyber should be turned off, abandoned.
I’m not anti-technology; I’m pro-reality. Technology can help us “stay in touch”, but we must guard against mistaking the electronic sense of “touch” for the real sense of touch. Having more friends online than we ever actually see should be a red flag, not a badge of honor. Feeling that we never need to pen a letter is a loss. If you’ve not tried it recently, I encourage you to. You will find that the mind works very differently at the pace of pen and paper than it does at the pace of T9.
In the final analysis we should all ask ourselves: if we can have and exist in only one of the two worlds, the real or the cyber, which would we choose? I would choose the real for its sunrises and sunsets, its gourmet coffee, its summer rain, its caress of a loved one.
Tags: BBS, Borg, brewery, cyber world, cyberscape, real world, Salvador Dali, social network, technology