The Internet - I wonder how many paragraphs start like that…
The Internet. The explosion of social networking; blogging; photoblogging; vblogging; tweeting. For those of us - that’s you, Reader. I keep a check on these things, mostly because I’m boring and don’t want to tell the world about it). That live so much of our lives online, it gives a mostly one way flow of information. Stuff that is “You” going out there. Like a radio blasting Britney Spears out into space for who knows what to pick up.
Sure, it’s harmless. There’s nothing out there anyway. No serial killers. Stalkers. People out to use those broadcast bits of You for their own ends which ultimately does you harm.
So all of these bits of You floating around. They’re all connected. Yes, the collection is incomplete, which might itself be part of the problem or another problem altogether. But these interconnected bits, flow together and pool up. They provide a template, a table of parity data used to build another you inside the minds of others. A facsimile similar to the one you make when you meet and hang out with a new person. But it’s lacking. It lacks the reverse flow of data. They get the template of you. But you don’t get the template of them.
Now, the actual problem. When two people meet, template free. They each have blank slates on which to store these bits of each other. Which is the accepted norm. If two people meet that have been mutually collecting bits of each other, they already have a template each and while not normal in the traditional sense, isn’t a social iceberg out to sink the friendship. But… what if two people cross paths and one of these two people has a template, while the other doesn’t? What then? One person is loaded with Information and the other merely holds a blank slate? Is this Information bias the water pooling behind the bulkhead of the Titanic?
21st Century Internet Ettiquette feels like another social minefield. Like High School. Global High School.
