Is there life after FaceBook?

L)) Listen to a recent episode with the same name I published oN my podcast channel at AudioBoo

FaceBook Memories

Last week, I took what seemed, at first, to be a difficult decision. I de-activated my FaceBook account. Even if I can re-activate my account within a time window, it’s unlikely for me to return. I admit that I was pretty excited when I started using FaceBook for the first time. It felt good to see more ‘friends’ and acquaintances joining me as a ‘friend’. Indeed, over the years, I did gain a modest number of followers, including new and old friends, schoolmates, relatives and had the chance to connect with like minded people.

Disenchantment

On the other hand, I have grown weary about what FaceBook has become. While I find that the idea of social networks and FaceBook in particular, to be a positive one, I regret that, on its part, FaceBook has sold its soul (if social networks can have one) to businesses and companies. Unfortunately, as a FaceBook user, I noticed that many of those using what is now a social network giant don’t yet understand the implications of posting stuff on the platform.

In fact, people have been posting updates about the most trivial things happing in their lives, posting photos that may be inappropriate or sharing ‘feel good’ updates or ‘feel bad’ updates to gain attention. We also sometimes tend to post status updates to provoke controversy. All in all, we seek to create an identity and seek to be popular - even if it means portraying ourselves as tragic victims. Worse still, we fill our profiles with details about who we are or what we do to the whole world to find. Things that we might not be comfortable sharing with a person we met in the street, we are ready to tell the world.

A Privacy Lost

Many people have rightly expressed their concerns following Edward Snowden's revelations that the US government Is monitoring the activities of its citizens, and most likely, other citizens from other countries to protect “national security”. But, forgetting this issue for today, these concerns arise because we value our privacy. After all, we want to keep aspects of our lives to ourselves. However, our insistence on the ‘sacred’ right to privacy seems to be inconsistent with how we behave on FaceBookFaceBook activity is also precious information for businesses to use and exploit for their own business interests. A thing that we make easier for those seeking to make more profit whenever we press LIKE on a particular product and service. While this can help the company improve their service, it is also somewhat an invasion of our privacy, It night even mean that we are valuing products as people. For, in truth, the FaceBook started off as a network of friends, it has been colonised by an aggressive commercialisation where objects become our friends and friends, in a way, become objects.

Sadly, I realise that FaceBook is neither the utopian social network which connects people from around the world to encourage dialogue and mutual understanding. Yes, there are some groups and individuals who are engaging in a dialogue to promote peace and justice around the world. Yet, as with anything we create as human beings, FaceBook has been the meeting place for those who spread hate or intolerance to others, including far right groups and those groups which implicitly support homophobia, people of different race, faith or disability. This tendency for us to form our own affiliations even if they condone hate crime or violence, is a reality. And if a group is private, FaceBook can be a place where we limit ourselves to reading from people who have our opinions without even giving the chance for us to hear a different opinion than our own.

Again, I am not condemning FaceBook or those who use it. For all I know, I might return. However, I believe that I have become too dependent on FaceBook to the extent that I wasn’t sure whether I could live without it. A feeling I am sure some readers can relate to. I haven’t become addicted to FaceBook. But, then again, I had a life before FaceBook. We all had. In a way, FaceBook. I thank all of you who joined me on FaceBook is not going to be there forever. And it could continue to change too much.

I left FaceBook tO regain my authenticity and grow in self-knowledge without having to adopt an identity that is NOT who I am!


PS: I will still be on Twitter though - so you can still connect with me @GordonGT!

Into the Internet Wilderness

This is my last entry. At least, it'll the only one I will be writing for the next two weeks for sure. I'm also stopping from using social network for the coming two weeks. I have been thinking of becoming an Internet hermit for a while since I started my investigation of the nature of life through my study of Buddhism. I knew that I had become too reliant, and perhaps dependent, on social media. While our dependent natures are inescapable realities, not all forms of dependence were beneficial. And, I started wondering whether my use of social networks, and by extension, the Internet, getting out of hand? Was I perhaps hiding from a part of myself which I was reluctant to recognize or accept - preferring instead to choreograph a virtual life and masquerade as a person who was happy enough. At the same time, sincerely attempting to live up to an illusion with all the good intentions.. At the end of it all, I am asking who I had become to my inner self. Could I the free again from the imposition of a disillusioned identity I had created myself? More fundamentally, I have been asking myself whether I had allowed my Internet alter ego take over the basic values and aspirations I had before I became involved with the network. Admittedly, it wasn't that bad because I did make new friends and expanded my contacts. However, despite the friendships i have made and will make through social media, I think that it's more worthwhile if I took a step back and examine who I am in the context of a changing reality. Regrettably, I know that the modern world prevents me from being completely separate from the web of the internet spider. Indeed, I will have to keep using email to keep up with my work commitments. However, this fact that doesn't mean that I have to think of myself as a technological "slave". I believe that it is a matter of being mindful of your thoughts and feelings when using technology. Taking care to put it in the right place and not giving it power it does not have in its own right. I admit, I don't know if I will succeed in living without the use of social media for these two weeks or so.I will do my best to keep up away from social networks. I hope to learn something about myself and will come back with my observations on the The ZoneMind by the end of these two weeks.

So, until the 22ndAugust 2011, I'll be off from social networks, new media, and other forms of internet communication - with the exception of email. Until that date, I wish you all the best!!!



Marsaxlokk, Malta
Tuesday, 9th August 2011

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Disconnected in a Networked World

Today, most of us living in  are connected in a way or another to the world wide web. In fact, the very existence of this blog depends on the developments that took place in history, most obvious being the development of networked information systems, the computer itself and the  software needed to operate this new technology. 

However, there are less obvious factors that are not immediately relevant. For instance, adequate supply of food, water and energy; the fact that we are safe, even the fact that we can access the technology and had the opportunity to learn how to use it. Whether we like it or not, this legacy is also built on a history of the exploitation of natural resources, the practice of slavery, and bloody battles and wars between nations - to name just a  few. There’s, of course, plenty of positive events that characterize our history, such as our solidarity for other nations which experience natural disasters, persecution, war and oppression. Our human inheritance reflects who we are as a species. There is plenty of good in everyone of us, but there’s that potential for destruction that is concerning. Particularly because it can destroy all we have built in a blink of an eye. In addition, although we may take this technology, many people living around the world are still excluded from internet access due to lack of resources or educational opportunities (to name just a few). 

But what does this have to do with social networks? Apart from the dangers of our growing reliance, if not dependence, on social networks, there is also the risk that we forget that there are other people who either choose to keep their distance from the technology that enable social networks, there are others who simply have no choice in the matter. While this is a significant issue in its own right, in this meditation, I wish to focus my attention on the potential of social networks in communication and the possible pitfalls of this technology. 

Social networks have been hailed as a radical shift in how people connect with one another. Personally, over the course of internet use since the late 90s, I submitted a lot of profiles and registered to so many sites that I forget. But, the question really is whether this paradigm shift in communication is making us better at relating to one another. In addition, are we being authentic or sincere in the way we present ourselves to the online world?

Here, I acknowledge that the internet has opened up possibilities that I would never have imagined. I can communicate with people around the world by using various means, such as blogs, podcasts, social networks, etc. Indeed, this technology enables to reach out to more people beyond the barriers of time and space or the disabling environment that still restricts my movement in society as a wheelchair user. However, while I type about the positive aspects in all this, I can’t help wonder whether by choosing this medium for communication, like many others are doing, I’m losing something in the process.

And this something is really being in the presence of another human being. While we can communicate by writing, podcasting our message, recording a youtube video or posting a status update, I feel that this cannot replace the human element. In fact, I fear that this technology can make us forget that, on the other end, there are people coming from different backgrounds and who have their own insight into life.

I fear that instead of connecting to a wider world, we form our own exclusive communities which promote exclusion rather than encourage inclusion and social dialogue. Indeed, another serious danger remains that we lose our sense of who we are and surround ourselves with things that validate us and make us feel good about who we are. Finally, the danger is that we end up misrepresenting ourselves for fear of being unpopular or not fitting in with the rest of people. At the same time, in an attempt to draw attention to ourselves, we may also choose to be controversial, if not seek notoriety.

However, what it boils down is the fact that I’m left a feeling with a certain disconnection with those who are my online friends and contacts. This is not because I doubt their intentions are insincere, but they remain, at best, incomplete and, at worse, even isolating. Of course, there is value to social networks as they provide people, like myself, who still encounter problems with accessing society with the opportunity to relate to others regardless of time and distance.

However, as II end this rather lengthy meditation, I cannot help comment that I believe that social networks and the internet as a whole is not a replacement for our need to connect to other people. It may help, yes, but there will still be an essential component that we can only find in human relations where we are in the presence of another. Believe me, we may be accepting or even loving of other people in the online world but find out that we meet that sane person face-to-face, we become not so accepting and tolerance. Indeed, the old saying that “action speak louder than words” is quite appropriate in this context. For in an attempt to fulfill the need to belong on the world wide web, we might really end up entangled in its thread and even lose the sense of reality and of who we are.