How Far Would You Go For Facebook?

In a recent Huffington Post article, guests at a luxury hotel indicated that they would rather give up alcohol while on vacation than social networking. Although it may seem ridiculous at first, the study is also a frightening reality check of society's apparent addiction to interacting with others online. Be it through Facebook, twitter, or even e-mail, many people find it difficult to go one day (let alone an entire vacation) without going onto the web and updating their posts or perusing the posts of others.

If membership to a social network was an innocent part of life, then it probably wouldn't be so alarming to me that we all have such a hard time living without it. But the fact is by being on social networking sites you are indirectly allowing companies to market to you. Every time you like a particular page, or post a status about a product, companies use that information to formulate an idea of what your interest might be. As a result, there will be ads on the right hand side of the screen tailored to your interests. Even if you decline to both like pages and posting statuses, they could still market to you based on your age, gender, and other demographics.

At the same time, there is the aspect of the unknown about social networking membership. Who knows who exactly is looking at our information and for what reason. The panoptic nature of the internet means that we can never be certain if forces like the government or our teachers or whomever are actually looking at our pages. Think of the phenomenon of "Facebook creeping". If you participate in the activity, you know that you have probably spent way too long of a time looking at someone's page who you may barely know or not even know at all. Have you ever wondered who "creeps" on your profile or why they would do it? And perhaps the motivations of these unknown entities are less innocent than simply Facebook creeping.

So if by being a part of a social networking site means basically becoming a mine for marketing companies and an object of potentially unwanted attention, why do we participate? Why would people ever subject themselves to such a simultaneously ambiguous and nefarious force? Perhaps we were unaware of these dangers when we first joined our beloved social networking sites. But now, as the Huffington Post article indicates, there may be no turning back. If these sites are actually more addictive then alcohol, can we expect to see an influx of Social Networking Users support groups sometime soon?

Don't Write the Eulogy of Print Just Yet

 

      Increasingly we have experienced a sense of conversion from print to digital. With the advent of Nooks and Kindles at the same time as book stores like Borders going bankrupt, there seems to be a direct causation. While it is true that these events simultaneously occurred, I don't think that e-readers have crumbled the institution of the printed book.
      As Michel Foucault explores in his essay "What is an Author?", the printed word had its beginnings in exclusivity. Not only was literacy uncommon in the Middle Ages, but early books had to be made painstakingly, either by hand or with early forms of the printing press. Books were valuable and one of a kind. Although they became more accessible with later, faster versions of the printing press, they retained their sense of importance through the author function. To be well-versed in a certain area of thought, there were established authors and their publications to read. Today this tradition continues, not only with the reading of the "classics", but also with the idea in general that certain authors are experts in their particular subject. Why is it that professors assign specific readings in their classes? Could the same information be learned from other, lesser known sources? Although the answer may be yes, the fact remains that authors and their works are assigned hierarchical levels of importance.
      In the same manner, the media through which information is conveyed can be arranged in an order of reliability. In comparison to print, the digital world of information sharing can often be counterproductive. Simply the instantaneous nature of the internet and its countless contributors can allow it to be characterized as an unreliable source. And although e-readers are not necessarily as fickle as your average internet blog, it is true that they lack the sense of isolation that the printed word provides. While reading  a physical book, one is confined in general to the intended information. But on an e-reader, there is the possibility of downloading other publications and even playing games, which may distract from the reading experience altogether.
      The inferiority of both the internet and the e-reader therefore reinforce the importance and exclusivity of the printed book. Not only does a physical book usually cost more than its digital counterparts, but also more work goes into its production. Instead of the digital world driving out the world of print, I hypothesize instead that it has made the book itself more valuable to the reader.

Mortality or Virtual Reality?

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For fear of getting too batshit crazy and deep, let’s talk about out-of-body experiences. Usually we think of them as extreme spirituality where the mind is freed from the confines of physical existence.  At some point in your life you may have meditated and experienced this illusion. But is the separation of mind and body physically possible? Perhaps what comes to mind is a Matrix-like situation where we plug our brains into a computer and live a world entirely in our imagination. But imagine if our minds could exist solely on a computer. Arguably this situation may already be in the works.  Our personal computers are the guardians of our lives; they connect us to our friends, act as a source of virtually all information, and also help us complete work for school or jobs.

 It’s undeniable that we spend an obscene amount of our time typing and staring at our laptops. As they are an extension of our minds and lives, it’s not that difficult to picture the activity going a step further. Who’s to say that in another century our entire lives won't be lived online through virtual reality? And what would that do to the importance of the physical body?

From my perspective,  life in the physical world is just a losing battle; the body is a weak organism susceptible to the perils of nature and disease. Many (admittedly obsessive) humans are forever searching for methods to prolong their lives and potentially live forever, but that could not be achieved through the physical existence. The only place that immortality is possible is in the realm of virtual reality.  Sure you could say that this depends on the lifespan of technology through which we would access this theoretical world, but I feel much more confident in the longevity of a computer over the frailty of the human body. Then that brings our argument to the morality of having to live completely through the mind. Some would argue that that wouldn't be really living if you couldn't physically experience the smell of fresh grass or the comfort of a hug from your friend. But if a virtual reality world could mimic our senses, would it really matter? I personally feel torn, but the possibilities of a virtual reality world would be endless.

#Twitter #Famous

           

Picture this: in the olden times of lore (20 years ago) someone who wrote for a living (gasp: a writer?!) had their work published in print mediums like books, newspapers, and magazines. It was reasonable to assume that a particular author's greatness or talent in writing could be judged by said sales of those books, newspapers and magazines. But that was a long time ago, and nowadays there's something that this generation pays more attention to than some best-seller list. I'm talking about Twitter followers people! How many do YOU have? Your friends? Your favorite celebs? With every 140-character post you hope that you are being funny/inspiring/profound enough to make more people click the 'follow' icon on your twitter profile. Let's face it, the entire reasoning behind having a twitter is for the sake of gathering as many people as you can to read your daily thoughts.

Some of the most popular people on Twitter are comedians like Rob Delaney or maybe sizzlingly romantic singers like Frank Ocean. Even morons like the Kardashian sisters have an entire Twitter empire. So what makes them the most widely read contemporary “authors” in the modern world? Why are people spending more effort reading their twitter feed than the pages of a book?  I myself enjoy cracking open a physical book at the end of the day and dog-earing all the pages. 

But I will shamelessly admit that I too am a Twitter enthusiast. In the end it definitely comes down to the excitement of it all: constant new tweets to read, information from all over the world, and a way to get a laugh or maybe some important relationship advice from Drake. Although (old) people might say that this medium is a product of our attention-deficit modern culture, I just think that they should accept change is inevitable- and most importantly follow me on Twitter.