"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."
Charles Dickens wrote those words to describe events in Paris and London during the French Revolution, but they could easily be used to describe our country today. The world is both exciting and terrifying on a daily basis and those who think the future is looking bright are at odds with those who think it's the end of civilization as we know it. It seems like the "gray" areas that have always existed in our society are being replaced with black and white extremes that leave little room for compromise anymore.
In recent weeks, Facebook and other social media have turned into battlegrounds as one issue after another seems to divide everyone down the middle, whether it's gay marriage, the Rebel flag, Obamacare, immigration or that whole Taylor Swift/Katy Perry feud. There has always been a political abyss separating the Republicans and Democrats, which is why Washington rarely gets anything accomplished, but more and more it seems like we as a people couldn't have a discussion about our favorite flavor of Pop Tart without coming to blows.
The Internet itself is partially to blame because it has drawn all of us closer, opening up vast opportunities to interconnect like never before, whether we're compatible or not. The days of peeking over your neighbor's fence or sneaking a look inside their medicine cabinet have been replaced with the ability to peer into all aspects of their lives and to find out their opinions on pretty much everything. We suffer from a sort of collective split personality. We complain about lack of privacy and the fear Big Brother is watching us even as we share everything about ourselves online. The days of losing track of people are gone because now I can find out what my third-grade crush had for lunch or get into a debate about a 150-year-old war with a former neighbor I haven't seen in 20 years.
There are many benefits to this new frontier, like people posting lost or found pets or missing children and often getting instantaneous results. Bad and good news can be shared with friends and family in a flash. Organizing events or just getting people praying for each other has never been simpler.
The downside is that sometimes conversations we once had with a few friends sitting around a table, who at the end of the day still remain friends, have now become virtual town hall meetings that tend to end up in shouting matches. I think people sometimes post things in the heat of the moment they would never say to someone in person. The same technology that has connected us all seems to have caused a disconnect from the basic social graces that normally govern our day-to-day personal interactions. A recent tragedy in our community really drove that home and more than one friend told me they avoided social media altogether for several weeks because things got so ugly.
The speed of the Internet has robbed us of patience with the sometimes more deliberate processes of daily life. We all want answers and satisfaction for our grievances to appear as instantly as the smiley faces we can conjure up with the click of a button. The ability to Google information has turned everyone into an expert on everything, but remember that just because it's on the Internet doesn't make it true. The growing number of satirical "news" sites that admittedly fabricate stories with often hilarious results only add to the confusion because sometimes the humor isn't far removed from reality and the creators fail to factor in the gullibility of many of our fellow Internet denizens.
As an example, I had about a dozen friends who actually believed that the poor Russian computer programmer who messed up the iconic rings during the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics in Sochi last year was promptly executed. My assurances that the story detailing his sad fate came from "The Onion," probably the most famous of the fake news sites, only managed to convince about half of them. I mean, it was Russia, after all. They do have a history of being a little harsh so I guess it wasn't that far fetched.
I understand now why it's called the World Wide "Web" and how sometimes its easy to be one of the flies caught in its trap. Don't get me wrong. I think it's good to embrace this brave new world with all its marvelous possibilities. Share it. Post it. Instagram it. Tweet it. But we need to hold on to those values and ideals that got us here in the first place.
Eric Schmidt, a software engineer who made billions from the Internet, called it "the largest experiment in anarchy that we've ever had," and Albert Einstein warned us to not let our technology exceed our humanity. But I think Gertrude Stein, who died long before the Internet came along, summed it up best when she said, "Everybody gets so much information that they lose their common sense." Can you imagine what she would think of the world today?
Editorial on 08/30/2015