One of the books I vividly recall reading from my childhood was called Run Silent Run Deep (by Edward L. Beach, as it turns out). It had belonged to my mother (and quite probably my uncle) before me. It was set in World War II and told the story of a young lieutenant (j.g. - for some reason I always remember that) whose mission was to infiltrate a Japanese held island. To do this, he had to be transported via submarine and use the fairly new-fangled S.C.U.B.A. (back when it was still an acronym and not a word) to land on the island, accomplish his mission, and retreat. The whole book - at least what I recall of it - was based around the tension between the detection risk of the submarine as they continued farther into enemy held waters to complete the mission and then return. Would they be able to escape? Would they be able to run silent and deep?
Where did the random thought from 40 years ago come from in the dark morning hours of 0500? It was tied, as I processed the thought, to the post I had written last week about an InterWeb scare. Not directly tied to it mind you - but it brought up again the question of anonymity in the modern InterWeb world.
Modern society and the InterWeb thrives on the sharing of personal information - if you think this is not so, travel back with me to the Dark Ages of dial-up Internet (if you are of that age, you will the noise of connection as I speak), where all that we knew of each other was a login name and what was written. It was a world of images made of pixels and words - nothing like the vibrancy of social media today. But this vibrancy comes at a cost: to be more vibrant, it must be interesting and to be interesting, it is always personal: pictures, stories, the things about us that make us ourselves.
Business and governments love this, of course. For businesses, we are simply targets of marketing - and the more information, the more specific marketing we can be sent, targets of things we "need", all provided to us in a spirit of just helping have "a better on-line experience". And government - well, the more you know about your citizens the more you can serve - or control - them, depending on your benevolence or thirst for power.
But we now have a phenomenon which is not so much new as it is increased in scope and virulence: the review and collection of all of this information on the InterWeb for the purposes of personal control and destruction. The wrong sorts of information - and by wrong I mean thought of by wrong by someone else - is now the basis for a public shaming and campaign of personal destruction, the likes of which Nathaniel Hawthorne or Mao Tse-Tung could only dream of.
The likely outcome? I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet and bear no crystal ball into the future. An application. That is more easily predictable.
It will, in a way, be the death of the InterWeb.
The reaction - or at leas some people's reaction - will be the same as the aforementioned lieutenant (j.g.): Run Silent, Run Deep.
The rediscovery of the Age of Privacy is about to come crashing back down on us. For some - let us use myself as an example - it will look a lot like scaling back and off of social media, of using less InterWeb business sites, of using more cash - and a lot less about creating a vibrant InterWeb culture. My thoughts and opinions on the InterWeb will become a great deal like my thoughts and opinions in my real life: not discussed at all, or only in the company of those I intimately know and trust. I will become what I was before the dawn of social media: words and pixel images.
The picture I still have in my head from the author of that book from so long ago is the crushing constraint of the sea all around and the fragile claustrophobic submarine interior that protected them as they fled to avoid detection. The picture I now have is that of individuals, with the fragile claustrophobic interior of our lives fighting a sea of information and data that seeks to know and catalog us for future use.
We are indeed at the edge of Huxley's Brave New World. But appears it is not so much a Brave step forward as much as it is a slow retreat backwards.
Yes, I definitely can still hear that warbling tone and static noise as it connected to some electronic billboard of information.
ReplyDeletePeople who can safely disconnect and not look back, are lucky indeed.
God bless, TB. :-)
The threat of the internet faces us all. Nothing is sacred or secret - for us or the ruling elite. We were never supposed to know about Hillary’s emails, Harvey Weinstein’s indiscretions, or Trump’s fling with a porn star.
ReplyDeleteThey may have info on you that you would rather they didn’t; but you have info on them as well. I don’t think people will put up with having the net regulated myself. I never bothered with social media because I knew it would be pozzed by people I hate. I phone or visit my loved ones and leave it at that.
Right Linda? Entire generations will never know that sound except in cartoons and movies about the 1990s.
ReplyDeleteGlen - The Internet. In some ways, the great equalizer - if equally applied. Otherwise, an even bigger bludgeon to destroy people.
ReplyDeleteAs they said in Ghostbusters, Choose the form of the Destroyer and perish.
A thoughtful, and I think, accurate assessment of the state the internet is in. Or creating. Part of the information collecting, in my experience, is that it isn't necessarily accurate. Facebook, for example. I set up an account only to see photos of my granddaughters. Then my goat association pressed using a private FB group as a communication tool. Facebook itself keeps bugging me to complete my profile (of which I could care less). So they've taken to trying to fill in the blanks themselves by making guesses. Trouble is, their guesses aren't correct. Then I found out about their political profiling of people. On my occasional visits I only look at goat stuff and like my granddaughter's pictures, but they've profiled me as an "ultra conservative." Based on ????? Then Zuckerburg admitted to congress that they collect information on people who don't even have FB accounts "for security purposes." Not one politician blinked an eye. Google is just as bad because both assume a right to whatever they want. It's a shame the US doesn't follow the EU in standing up for the privacy rights of their citizens. But it wasn't until Paypal made a couple of unauthorized withdrawals from my bank account and wouldn't give it back, that I began to abandon some of my previous internet uses. Search engines have become a joke with everyone jockeying for position with SEO. How many times does one click on what appears to be a useful site only to discover that the search engine blurb was misleading? Yet here I am leaving a comment on your blog, all thanks to the internet. Ironic, eh?
ReplyDeleteThanks Leigh.
ReplyDeleteI have a Facebook account as well - largely for my family as well, but as you point out, many (if not most) organizations have moved to Facebook as well. And to be fair (being an officer in such an organization) keeping up Facebook is a great deal easier than keeping up a website.
You are also correct that all social media wants to complete the blanks. Why? I think it is because they think of all of us a commodity to be marketed to (if not controlled to a greater or lesser extent). We have to fit into certain boxes - and if we do not, they will try to fit us in based on what they think we are based on our associations, comments, "friends", etc.
I have tried to my access - being more sure to log off whenever I am not actively on a Google or Facebook (or even my mail) site. Pulled Facebook off my phone so it could not tell me where I was and did I want to let everyone know?
Sadly, US politicians will (I suspect) never manage to address this breach of privacy by private corporations, partially because it serves their own interests as well.
But you are right. There is irony here. In that sense, the Interweb truly is a tool: it can be used for good or evil purposes. It depends on the intent of the user, not the nature of the tool itself.