Today, the world is getting more and more divided over what we consider normal. We have become so accustomed to our modern lifestyle, we don’t even notice it anymore.
Our society has normalized the idea that we have to be constantly on guard against something, but that concept has never really evolved. It’s always been a part of our lifestyle, but it’s just gotten more intense. Every day more and more people are on the edge of some sort of action.
Now, for example, we are seeing more and more people becoming obsessed with their phones, as if each one of them were somehow connected to another person. In reality, people spend so much time interacting with their phones and their devices that it has become a part of our normal life. Our culture has made it so that when we are on the verge of doing something, we are now making a point to do it so it becomes a “thing.
That said, with the rise of social media, we are seeing more and more people becoming obsessed with their phones and social media apps, and that’s a bad thing. It’s not good for the phone companies, who don’t want to see people with their phones in front of them. It’s also bad for us as people, who are forced to use our phones and our apps to accomplish things we wouldn’t if we didn’t have access to those things.
I can hear the argument now – “You can’t have a personal life and a personal phone in the same sentence.” I agree, at least personally, but we are all being controlled in some way by the devices we use, the apps we use, and the networks we are using. I don’t want to be controlled in this way, and I don’t think anyone does, because, as my friend Tim said, we are all just a part of the same machine.
For those of us who want our privacy intact, I don’t think anyone can argue with that. For those of us who don’t, it seems that we aren’t alone.
I think privacy itself is an issue, because we can’t really have it. But in our society we’re so used to being watched, followed, and monitored that we don’t even know what we’re missing. We don’t know we’re missing the privacy of our own personal life and the privacy of our own personal phone. We just don’t know we’re missing it. We’re being controlled.
I’ve always believed that a great deal of this is the result of technology (such as the internet and the cell phone) making us so accustomed to being watched and controlled that we don’t even recognize that we’re being controlled. The only way we can get rid of this is to create a society in which we are more likely to realize our own privacy is something we value.
That is, if we can get rid of the state and replace it with a social network that allows us to participate by allowing us to know what the government might do without being at risk. In this way, the government no longer feels so important. At least, that is the hope.
With the exception of governments, the society I envision would be more like a “social network for the people.” It would have the same basic attributes that Facebook and MySpace have: chat rooms, groups, friends lists, games. It would allow people to build their own communities and to form groups that could create groups of people to act together in.
