Fairly Philosophical Friday: Why the Brave New World is Good

In the not-too-distant past, if you wanted to talk to someone and not be face-to-face with them, you had to call them up on a telephone and hope they were by the other end in order to answer it. Now, you could text them, you could email them, you could IM them… You get the idea. And if you wanted to tell others your opinion, or write a story and disseminate it to the masses, you would have to publish it in print form either through a publisher or by yourself, and hope the cost wouldn't be too great. Now, you can get a blog for free and babble about whatever you damn well please. Have a post every Friday morning and give it an alliterative title. Or some such.

So obviously, we're a lot more connected than we used to be. So what? You might ask. Well, what happened in the aftermath of the Boston Bombing got me to thinking. When they were looking for the suspects, and asking for information, especially video or photos taken, they got literally several terabytes of data. On the one hand, it's wonderful that we now can get so much data in order to catch the perpetrators. But it also seems that the unintended consequence of being super-connected and everyone having cheap cameras on their cellphones is that we have created a sort of Big Brother State. Sure, it's great we can use that information to catch bombing suspects, but isn't there a danger in creating a slippery slope? Today we use our connectivity to catch terrorists, but tomorrow we catch our neighbor using our camera phone doing something we do not approve. It may not even be illegal, but what if we posted on Facebook where all could see? I bet it has already happened.

Before we get all agitated about potential privacy violations, let's dig a little deeper. In 1984, Big Brother had control because the State had total control. But that's not really what has happened in the real future. Yes, our government may be too overreaching in its ability to invade our privacy, but it does not have total control over that technology the way the fictitious Oceania had in 1984. Sites like WikiLeaks have shown the technology is more egalitarian. Yes, your employer might fire you over something stupid you said on Twitter. Then again, you might stumble upon his curious little fetish. Perhaps such an argument sounds childish, sounds a lot like the Second Amendment nutbags' argument that the criminal won't shoot if he thinks you have a gun. But I think it does something else. It makes society more transparent. That sounds pretty scary to many people. Emotionally, it sounds pretty scary to me. But intellectually, I think more transparency is a good thing.

Today, one of the social issues we talk about a lot is that of marriage equality. It seems obvious to many now that gay people should be able to marry. But what are those roots? Did we one day collectively wake up and think: "Gay people should get married!"? No. My hypothesis is that the gay-rights movement started with the AIDS epidemic, a disease that disportionately affects gay men. It forced homosexuality out of the closet because people we knew as our friends and family were now dying. We saw that gay people were just like straight people except they were attracted to the same gender. And therefore, be afforded the same marriage rights as straight people.

What other things has our greater connectivity brought out of the closet? The rise of the Internet porn industry I think has shown a greater prevalence of self-love than previously thought. Groups that have been historically marginalized are now able to organize more effectively through the Internet. These groups could be a part of the next wave of civil-rights movements now that they can find each other more effectively.

The World Wide Web has just turned 20 years old. In that time, it has changed society inextricably in ways we can see, and in ways that will become apparent in the decades and centuries to come. I can't see what the next 20 years will hold, but I'm sure the change to society will be greater than the previous 20 years. The ride certainly will be scary. I will suffer through many more complaints about yet more revisions to Facebook's privacy policy. I bet Facebook won't even exist in 20 years. Or Twitter. Or even Google. If our current slew of tech companies manage to survive, I bet they'll look very different than how they look now. Yes, it's a Brave New World. I intend to try to enjoy the ride.