Generation Big Brother

how technology works to our disadvantage

 

by jake blumberg

When future historians define my generation I had always hoped we would be known by some grand term, along the lines of my grandparent’s “Greatest Generation.”

Why wouldn’t we?  We have access to more information and knowledge than any generation before; we have better technology than science fiction authors could have ever dreamed 50 years ago; we have medicines to keep us healthier longer than any generation before us, giving us more time to do greater things than any who have come previously.

Yet I have a sickening feeling that even with all of these advantages we will instead be known as Generation Big Brother--a generation more interested in monitoring the lives of others than working to better our own personal lives and, in turn, making the world a better place than when we entered it.

The Internet alone has unfathomable amounts of information accessible to anyone with a phone line and computer. This fountain of knowledge can literally teach users to do almost anything, from heart surgery to car repairs. Nevertheless, with all the options out there on the ‘Net, the most accessed Web site in the U.S. is Myspace.com according to online intelligence service Hitwise.

 Myspace.com is an online “community” that allows individuals to post personal profiles others can visit to help keep tabs on the lives of friends. A novel idea apparently so captivating that nearly 98 million people have posted profiles on the site, spending hours upon hours checking up on the lives of others. 

Instead of spending time utilizing search engines like Google and Yahoo! to educate ourselves, my generation chooses to watch what others are doing, judging and editorializing one another’s lives.

Myspace.com is not the only example of this voyeuristic pandemic sweeping through our lives. There are plenty of sites featuring information about individuals for others to peruse at their leisure. 

DontDateHimGirl.com is one of those sites. The Web site allows women to post a profile of an ex-husband or boyfriend who was unfaithful, allowing other women to do a background check on a potential mate before they get too involved and, presumably, cheated upon. 

The site works off the belief that once a man is unfaithful he will always be unfaithful, and therefore he is un-dateable, unlovable and untouchable. Now I cannot attest to the truth of this theory one way or the other, but I do know the site is a symptom of the sickness infecting many of my peers—a fact proven by the 600,000 hits the site receives each day. 

Much ado has been made about the U.S. government’s Patriot Act and its caveats that allow the government to tap our phones and record our conversations, intruding on our personal privacy. As I assess where we spend our time on the Internet, I have begun to wonder if we have done all the government’s work for them. 

Knowingly, my generation has turned the very private facts of our lives into an open book, begging to be read by anyone with a keyboard and curiosity. Self- improvement has become a secondary priority, outranked by learning what others are doing in their private lives. The lessons of the world are at our fingertips, and we instead choose to learn if an acquaintance managed to get incredibly drunk the past weekend, causing them to do something worthy of our voyeur.

The world we have begun to create harkens back to the lessons of George Orwell’s “1984,” a novel that featured a world where citizens preyed on citizens, acting as veritable spies on the lives of friends and family. Without taking a step back and realizing what our time is being spent on we could easily make his terrifying fiction a haunting reality. 

Are we on the doorstep of such science fiction becoming our world? Of course not--the comparison is just a bit of hyperbole. Yet if we do not step back and examine what we spend our precious time on, we will have wasted the greatest opportunity a generation has ever been presented with: a longer life with fewer restrictions and greater chances to succeed. 

The choice is at our fingertips: the cure for the world’s ills, or information on who is cheating on whom. A decision not between Web sites, but between historical greatness and failure.