Brave New Internet

My friend recently announced his engagement. Proclaiming his intention to marry his girlfriend he invited everyone he knew to the party where the wine would be flowing and the conversation would be lively. However unlike the conventional engagement announcements on intricately designed paper and a party overlooking the beauty of Sydney the announcement was made via ‘Facebook’, a popular social networking site, and the party was held in ‘Second Life’, an intricately detailed virtual world where people can throw off the shackles of physics and fly around.
A recent survey from by YouGov in the UK has found out that half of all broadband users log into social networking sites and that more than 10 hours a week are spent online socializing. This works out to around 24 days a year compared with 22 days actually spent meeting friends or relatives.
Have we become so embedded in the internet that we are forsaking some of most cherished moments?
Too often the youth of today are told that they are spending far too much time in front of a screen and not enough time socializing. To our critics I say simply that we are socializing but considering the impact that the internet has had on society in the past two decades we are doing nothing wrong, its socialization that has evolved to the point where that’s all it is….a screen.
With the introduction of sites such as myspace, facebook and livejournal I’m able to interact with my friends, do my university assessments and write opinion pieces all without leaving my chair.
The internet was literally dumped in humanities laps and it took years for the shock to wear off. But whilst the older generation is still recovering from a form of cyber post-traumatic stress disorder the youth are embracing the evolving society. A globe, that has suddenly become completely inter-connected, has expanded and shrunk society at the same time. We’re able to instantaneously send files from one person to another across the world and its completely logical to assume that email will replace snail mail by the end of the century. This from the world that five hundred years ago still had large aspects undiscovered. At every stage of evolution since the axolotl rose from the primordial soup we have discarded anything that did not allow us take advantage of our surroundings. Now that man has finished evolving physically our evolution is taking place socially and with each generational leap we will leave something behind that is unnecessary.
What will the future hold for the generation that masters the internet? The dawn of the new information age is upon us. The internet is more important than any other device in the last hundred years and society is not controlling the evolution of the internet but rather the internet is controlling the way society is evolving.
Our many detractors spend their time warning parents that children are growing up without the skills needed to survive, that their progression to adulthood is being tampered by the many advancements in technology. They point out that those that were growing up were being denied “essential” skills such as map navigation because of the availability of GPS and general research because of the instantaneous answers of the internet. Whilst these people are entitled to his opinion, the future will prove him wrong. Facebook is the modernized equivalent of a phone book. Your contact details are all there and it’s easy enough to send a message to your “buddies” but for some reason contacting and socializing through a screen is considered “anti-social”. Technology has always replaced skills that eventually become redundant. Less than a five hundred years ago we relied upon celestial navigation to direct our ships, sun dials to tell the time and windows to throw waste out of. These have been replaced by GPS, clocks and indoor plumbing. Those growing up in the internet generation aren’t learning skills such as map reading or general research due to introduction of blanket wireless and the increasing reliability of computers and mobile internet, within the next century maps will not be printed on paper. Just as I was never taught how to use an abacus nor will my children be taught how to program a VCR as very soon videotapes will join the ever growing pile of discarded technology, replaced by personal digital recorders.
This generation is evolving without those “essential” skills because the internet is demanding it.
Huxley’s Brave New World could easily be used to describe the affect that the internet has had on society. Those that are controlling our future through innovation and the internet are the Alpha’s, whilst those that refuse to see the endless possibilities that the internet holds in this new, evolved society are merely the Epsilons. As the internet and technology expands even further we’ll see a host of new technologies open up to make our lives not only easier but better. We are confronted with a new period of evolution; there is no ice age and the fruits are high enough to reach but this age of evolution will have as much if not more impact on humanity. Society will learn to embrace whatever we face and if it is anything like the impact that the internet has had then we will learn to mould our lives around it and dispose of all that is deemed unnecessary.