When I was little, I was acutely aware that my father was a photographer. There were a lot of very obvious clues-- the piles of camera equipment everywhere (these were the days where pictures meant more than just your cellphone, and often it required a whole separate bag just for lenses), the constant yell of “Look over here! Don’t look like you’re looking though! No! Just look!” (which was really confusing for a young kid, let me tell you) and the stacks of photo albums in the family library. There were also some very subtle things. One of the few memories I have of my dad was once, on a particularly muggy, warm night during the summer time, as the ground was cooling off and spilling that heat into the surrounding air so that you felt like the earth was this crazy living thing slowly trying to wake up after a long sleep, I was sitting with my dad in the family library. He was probably trying to balance books from our families businesses at the end of the day and, while he pored over accounting books, I was equally studious at the The Bernstein Bears or something similar. I looked up after a lot of frustration at not being able to find room to put my book back and asked my dad why he needed all those photo books anyway.
He told me that he needed somewhere to put all of the photos he took. I asked him why he needed so many pictures. He told me that we all needed pictures-- he took them so that one day I wouldn’t forget where I came from-- that I would know that I was connected to something bigger than just me. Although one could argue that this was just some cultural asian thing that perfectly embodies the way asian families teach their children to prioritize (education, family, nation, everything else, then yourself), I can’t shake this memory today. I’ve recently read a lot of articles about how we (royal “we”, as in “us, society people, peeps who live together in these weird community-thingies). Wired wrote an article called “1993” that held mini stories about how those born in 1993 used technology today. Wired also interviewed Tim O’Reilly (founder of Global Network Navigator, the world’s first web portal, and now head of O’Reily Media) to review (in his own words) the evolution of technology as he’s seen it change over time. I watched Google’s Geek Week mini video about how gaming brings us together, and I read multiple other stories (“Punks Not Dead” and “Great Expectations”) about how one Ian Rogers went from skater bum of a by-gone Dogtown and Z-Boys era to a leader at TopSpin (a connection platform for artists and their fans) and the struggles of Irrational Games’ Ken Levine in making Bioshock Infinite as a perfect antithesis to Ayn Rand’s utopian image. What have learned?
Technology is changing the way that we expect to connect to one another, but beyond that, it’s something that’s bringing true value to us by reminding us that we’re not alone-- far from it. Before my time, it was Usenet, and even during my memory it was the Geocities Communities. It was Kidzone, ICQ and now it’s moving toward a more Reddit-based community, but the best thing that technology has done is to remind us-- to give us a way to reach out and connect with like-minded people. This can have and, the stories that I’ve recently read can attest, are making a profound change in the existence of us-- us as a people. Gone are the days where the nerd in school will never find anyone to share his LAN-based love. Gone are the days where the esoteric, old-sunken-ship-rebuild-in-a-bottle hobbyist can’t find others to debate the merits of certain types of glue. The most remote girl in the middle of the middle of the midwest can still comment on the merits of the latest fashion on the Paris runways with someone in Tokyo.
So is this why we love the internet? Because its our stable-est friend? Because it guarantees that, through if nothing else mathematical probability, we will never have to worry about loneliness again? To use consultant speak, this is a fundamental pivot point where expectations are changed dramatically. The generations have become increasingly “me-centric”, but maybe the internet simultaneously encourages and mitigates that tendency. Sure, we now demand that we’re “on” all the time-- that people answer any forms of communication immediately (or maybe they’re purposely avoiding us). But in return, we’ve also given a lot more of ourselves. Privacy is a huge point of contention, we throw almost all of ourselves-- probably a more genuine form of ourselves-- on the internet simply because we know now that there are others out there like us. I think that’s a small price to pay to remember that I’m connected to something bigger than me.
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