Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of MetaData
Do you remember the George Orwell Book, 1984? I do, vaguely.
Here's what I remember:
-It inspired the first Apple Computer commercial for the rollout of the Macintosh.
-Whatever it forcasted to happen in 1984, did not happen in 1984
and we were all a bit disappointed...kind of like when the
Y2K problem failed to cause anything interersting of note to happen.
-The Terry Gilliam movie, Brazil, borrowed heavily from its themes.
-Kurt Vonnegut, in his book, Welcome to the Monkey House, wrote a short story called
"Harrison Bergeron and the Handicapper General" that also portrayed a futuristic
environment of government intervention
-It portrayed a futuristic world of government monitoring whereby people lived in a
constant state of paranoia.
...so I don't really remember anything about the book. We do this a lot nowadays, saying we know something when we really only know things that relate to it and can talk about it in a general way. I think that's called metadata, but then again, I only know about metadata in the same way I know about 1984. Both terms refer to an idea that has come to mean something in it's cultural context.
In the world of online dating, you tend to run into a lot of this kind of talk. How do you make yourself look interesting in a page or less? Easy, blurt out interesting jargon that makes you sound like you have your finger on the pulse of science, technology, cuisine, fashion, politics and entertainment. OK, OK, forget the part about politics...no one really wants to talk politics on a date (although no one wants to date a Republican either, so you put that part up there simply to screen out the morons).
My current favorite bit of metadata from an online personal was posted by a woman who claimed to be a massage therapist and actress who "studies" quantum physics in order to understand more about how she relates to the universe. Now don't get me wrong, I believe in all of that theory...how we are made up of energy, how our thoughts have electric force that affects things around us, how our thoughts manifest themselves in the universe, how all things are related. I've seen the secret. I've seen What the Bleep Do We Know Anyways? But so has everyone else. But I don't think I would ever claim to study quantum physics based upon seeing a couple of poorly produced film projects.
But maybe I should! Here is a list of things I am going to claim to be an authority on for my profile:
Interactive Technology
Martian Robotic Explorers
Undersea wonders and reef culture
Global warming
Plate Tectonics
Tsunamis
gopher mating rituals
the iPhone
Postmodern Asian Expressionism
Classic Movies of the 1980's
Portugese feats of mechanical engineering
reading fossile fragments from the mesozoic era
Texas Hold'em poker
clown farming
Yeah, I should get some heavy traffic with buzzwords like those.
The truth is, I do manage to spur some interest with what I put out there. And after a couple of dates, it seems that the women I go out with want my full attention...meaning, they want me to be NOT ONLINE anymore. Another way to say that is they want me change...for them. A better way is that they want me to take my profile down. And yet another way of saying it is THEY ARE MONITORING my activities. On several occasions, I have had a couple of dates with someone and the minute she starts feeling something for me, she brings up the idea that she saw me online and that there is something wrong with this. It's a little like a woman saying, since we met in a bar, if you are in a bar, you must be meeting other people. Personally, I think being online, not matter what forum we're talking about (even this forum), is a bit like a video game. There is the appearance of reality, but that's not necessarily an accurate reflector of the world around us.
So here's the interesting paradox about online dating, then. It's a forum for meeting people, but it's also a forum for loosely monitoring other people's activity. It is your virtual field to plow, but it is also your shackles. The chalice for the hopes and dreams of postmodern, post-apocalyptic, post-9/11 procreation is also the training vehicle for ushering paranoia into our lives in a very comfortable packaging. You're literally paying for other people to monitor your activities. OK, so why are so many good-looking, intelligent, interesting people submitting to this form of intrusion? Easy...It's easy. You introduce yourself to the world once. You write an email to someone once. You meet for coffee or a drink once. ...and you're off to the races without any of the social hurdles that present themselves when we try to do this in dance in person. It's fucking for lazy people. I believe the human race will become weaker for it because negotiating obstacles is part of the Darwinian process. Take away the barriers and we're essentially letting the Dodo mate with the Quagga.
While internet dating holds the possibility of finding mr. or ms. right in a needlestack full of pricks, it is also conditioning us to send personal and financial information over publicly accessible lines, to accept the premise that we might currently be under observation both by people we want to see us and people we don't, to accept avatars as representations of actual people (photos often lie), and to loosen the personal bouondaries we exercise in person. Now I'm not saying we cannot find love in a world of 1's and 0's ad I'm not saying the mechanism for dating in the 21st century hasn't gotten me laid more times in the past couple of years than the count of my sexual exploits in the entire decade of my twenties. I'm just saying that 1984 came and went seemlessly without us knowing that what Orwell described is here in a way much more subtle way than we might imagine. Though we live in a world where the government has it's dirty hands in our wallets, our civil liberties, and our travel plans, it is not the Bush brothers we need to fear. Big Brother is the Borg we willingly plug ourselves into in order to be functioning parts of the society. Big Brother, in other words...is US. And with all of the perks and pleasures that seems to provide, we sacrifice bits of our humanity that tell everything about us, but which we don't value at all.
Here's what I remember:
-It inspired the first Apple Computer commercial for the rollout of the Macintosh.
-Whatever it forcasted to happen in 1984, did not happen in 1984
and we were all a bit disappointed...kind of like when the
Y2K problem failed to cause anything interersting of note to happen.
-The Terry Gilliam movie, Brazil, borrowed heavily from its themes.
-Kurt Vonnegut, in his book, Welcome to the Monkey House, wrote a short story called
"Harrison Bergeron and the Handicapper General" that also portrayed a futuristic
environment of government intervention
-It portrayed a futuristic world of government monitoring whereby people lived in a
constant state of paranoia.
...so I don't really remember anything about the book. We do this a lot nowadays, saying we know something when we really only know things that relate to it and can talk about it in a general way. I think that's called metadata, but then again, I only know about metadata in the same way I know about 1984. Both terms refer to an idea that has come to mean something in it's cultural context.
In the world of online dating, you tend to run into a lot of this kind of talk. How do you make yourself look interesting in a page or less? Easy, blurt out interesting jargon that makes you sound like you have your finger on the pulse of science, technology, cuisine, fashion, politics and entertainment. OK, OK, forget the part about politics...no one really wants to talk politics on a date (although no one wants to date a Republican either, so you put that part up there simply to screen out the morons).
My current favorite bit of metadata from an online personal was posted by a woman who claimed to be a massage therapist and actress who "studies" quantum physics in order to understand more about how she relates to the universe. Now don't get me wrong, I believe in all of that theory...how we are made up of energy, how our thoughts have electric force that affects things around us, how our thoughts manifest themselves in the universe, how all things are related. I've seen the secret. I've seen What the Bleep Do We Know Anyways? But so has everyone else. But I don't think I would ever claim to study quantum physics based upon seeing a couple of poorly produced film projects.
But maybe I should! Here is a list of things I am going to claim to be an authority on for my profile:
Interactive Technology
Martian Robotic Explorers
Undersea wonders and reef culture
Global warming
Plate Tectonics
Tsunamis
gopher mating rituals
the iPhone
Postmodern Asian Expressionism
Classic Movies of the 1980's
Portugese feats of mechanical engineering
reading fossile fragments from the mesozoic era
Texas Hold'em poker
clown farming
Yeah, I should get some heavy traffic with buzzwords like those.
The truth is, I do manage to spur some interest with what I put out there. And after a couple of dates, it seems that the women I go out with want my full attention...meaning, they want me to be NOT ONLINE anymore. Another way to say that is they want me change...for them. A better way is that they want me to take my profile down. And yet another way of saying it is THEY ARE MONITORING my activities. On several occasions, I have had a couple of dates with someone and the minute she starts feeling something for me, she brings up the idea that she saw me online and that there is something wrong with this. It's a little like a woman saying, since we met in a bar, if you are in a bar, you must be meeting other people. Personally, I think being online, not matter what forum we're talking about (even this forum), is a bit like a video game. There is the appearance of reality, but that's not necessarily an accurate reflector of the world around us.
So here's the interesting paradox about online dating, then. It's a forum for meeting people, but it's also a forum for loosely monitoring other people's activity. It is your virtual field to plow, but it is also your shackles. The chalice for the hopes and dreams of postmodern, post-apocalyptic, post-9/11 procreation is also the training vehicle for ushering paranoia into our lives in a very comfortable packaging. You're literally paying for other people to monitor your activities. OK, so why are so many good-looking, intelligent, interesting people submitting to this form of intrusion? Easy...It's easy. You introduce yourself to the world once. You write an email to someone once. You meet for coffee or a drink once. ...and you're off to the races without any of the social hurdles that present themselves when we try to do this in dance in person. It's fucking for lazy people. I believe the human race will become weaker for it because negotiating obstacles is part of the Darwinian process. Take away the barriers and we're essentially letting the Dodo mate with the Quagga.
While internet dating holds the possibility of finding mr. or ms. right in a needlestack full of pricks, it is also conditioning us to send personal and financial information over publicly accessible lines, to accept the premise that we might currently be under observation both by people we want to see us and people we don't, to accept avatars as representations of actual people (photos often lie), and to loosen the personal bouondaries we exercise in person. Now I'm not saying we cannot find love in a world of 1's and 0's ad I'm not saying the mechanism for dating in the 21st century hasn't gotten me laid more times in the past couple of years than the count of my sexual exploits in the entire decade of my twenties. I'm just saying that 1984 came and went seemlessly without us knowing that what Orwell described is here in a way much more subtle way than we might imagine. Though we live in a world where the government has it's dirty hands in our wallets, our civil liberties, and our travel plans, it is not the Bush brothers we need to fear. Big Brother is the Borg we willingly plug ourselves into in order to be functioning parts of the society. Big Brother, in other words...is US. And with all of the perks and pleasures that seems to provide, we sacrifice bits of our humanity that tell everything about us, but which we don't value at all.
posted by wally @ 10:11 AM
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