Let us picture a series of realistic scenes, some of which actually occur. One has assembled a group of friends to watch a movie, and one’s device counts the number of people in a room and decides that there are too many people for this to be a private viewing and refuses to show a movie. One moves in a certain way, and one’s entertainment center asks what game one wants to play like the irritating clip of Microsoft Office days of yore. One’s game system is always on, recording every sound that is made and every word that one says, with that information stored for uses unknown. One finds one’s own system hacked and feeds of one’s sitting on the couch in one’s boxers watching funny internet videos [1] are available for others to see because one is considered a suspect or a person of interest in a matter of popular interest. In all of these ways, and many more, the phenomenon of one’s technology being always on is an immensely troubling one, with unsettling implications for the way we live our lives.
In truth, many of us have likely given up any hope that our privacy can be preserved. Whatever the courts may say about certain aspects of our privacy, in truth our conversations and conduct are recorded with the potential for use and misuse by someone. Our cell phones have information tracked about our whereabouts that can be gathered when it is considered necessary, even when people are not voluntarily blasting their location to friends, acquaintances, and strangers by telling them where they are getting hamburgers or working out or engaged in various business as if we were interested in such matters. Likewise, our credit or debit cards can show a pattern of purchases that can tell others a lot about our lives and how well we are managing our personal affairs, how often we go out to eat, what items we purchase from what stores at what times of day or the week or month, and so on and so forth. Our wallets overflow with loyalty cards that track our purchases and gather information on us with the lure of deals or points that can be of use to use in the future. Our lives are filled with data that is of interest to others, and that can either help us or harm us, depending on who is collecting that data and to what ends that data is used.
In a similar fashion, this loss of privacy is leading us to find it more and more difficult to avoid having to be always on ourselves. If our lives are subject to scrutiny at every level, there is no point at which we can be ourselves without accepting the repercussions of that decisions. Our private communications have deep and unsettling public consequences, especially when we say something that is amiss. Our private conversations may be recorded and leaked to embarrass us and cause massive damage in our lives when our unwise and unguarded statements become the fodder for public consumption and ridicule. And there is little or no recourse that any of us have, because what is recorded is the truth, and because our good name and reputation, once lost, are nearly impossible to regain. Our every awkward words, and some of us are full of immensely awkward words, can be twisted beyond all recognition or similarity to their original meaning, intent, and context, and used against us, and most of us simply live in hope that we will not be subject to the scorn that falls on public individuals, even as we envy the wealth and influence of celebrities of at best modest accomplishments and abilities aside from their self-evident skills of self-promotion.
Many of us, in our own ways, seem to be always on. We smile around others and act as if everything is fine when everything is falling apart. We take pictures of ourselves and master lighting and photo editing techniques that put the best face on our goings on. Are we intentionally trying to be dishonest? I don’t think it reaches the level of conscious dishonesty, but practicing pretense is something many of us have mastered from long practice, because we all want to appear as if everything is alright even when it is not. There are few people we trust with the darkness in our hearts and with the brokenness in our lives, and given that so much of our lives is put our for public consumption either because of our own self-exposure or because of the collection of data and information and the results of observation by others, we are faced with the sad predicament that we are nearly always connected, nearly always under some sort of personal or electronic observation, and yet we are utterly and terribly alone within ourselves, unable to give voice to the one area where data cannot yet be gathered, from the feelings and longings of our hearts, and the struggles and torments of our invisible and interior existence that is always on, just like we are, and yet often unable to be fully recognize by those who are around us.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/literal-music-videos/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/01/16/youre-playing-you-now/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/bitten-by-your-bad-reputation/
https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2014/10/20/what-do-you-see-when-you-see-me/
Edge Induced Cohesion 