Is reality real?

The Oxford English Dictionary defines reality as the world or the state of things as they actually exist  as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them. One cannot help but wonder if the activities that take place over the internet if they are real or not. Are the teenagers who reinvent themselves on the internet real or is it part of a fantasy? Are the dangers that are lurking on the internet real or is it just a myth? What exactly is the internet? Does the internet contains a world of knowledge? These are just some of the questions that this blog post would like to address.

Although most of us today have an idea of what the internet it was almost impossible for me to find a definition that I believe that my great-grandmother would be able to understand. The best definition that I was able to find is that it is a vast computer network linking smaller computer networks worldwide. The definition then further explains that the internet includes commercial, educational, governmental, and other networks all of which use the same set of communication protocols. Even with this definition it was still vague and even myself an avid user of the internet I never thought of it this way.  In my head it is almost magical. One of the great things about the internet is that we can find answers to almost any question. Even if the answer is not there we can post a question and usually someone will respond to that question. As such the internet might be seen as a tool that brings individuals from all over the world together. It allows us to see different views on a variety of topics.

Well that was what it was suppose to do. In recent years however, the internet has been creating filter bubbles. That is based on our previous activities it will try and determine what it believes is important to us. How does it determine this? It does this by looking at links that we clicked first, the profiles that we visit the most and our interests based on our previous activities. While this may be good it has some obvious drawbacks. One of the major drawbacks is that the unlike humans the internet does not have the moral capacity to decipher what is good and what is bad. 

It was very interesting to me to find out about the “filter bubbles” phenomenon. Much like the presenter Eli Pariser I often wondered why is it that I only see a few persons in my news feed on Facebook. Well it turns out that based on the profiles that I have visited in the past Facebook believes that these profiles are more important to me and I would prefer to see them rather than everyone else on my friends list. This is not the case as I joined Facebook to stay connected to all the friends on my list. In fact there is a relatively new concept known as homophily. This is where individuals spend a lot of time seeking like minded peers that will reinforce what they already believe and as such do not provide themselves with a different view.

The article Mind Control and the internet spoke to how much the internet and technology by extension have become a part of our beings. Have you ever left your cell phone at home and feel as if a part of you is missing? It would almost appear as if the cell phone is needed to make you feel complete almost as if the cell phone and the user are one. Well this might not be quite accurate but researchers in two different studies have shown where two individuals were able to move the mouse on a computer by just thinking that they are doing so. This is just simply unbelievable our mind is now able to control a foreign object without any form of physical interaction.

To switch gears a bit I would like to discuss the topic of social networking. Social networking sites such as Hi5, Facebook, Myspace and Twitter have revolutionized the way we think of social networking. Thanks to these sites we are able to reinvent ourselves which might have its pros and cons. In fact I saw this as one of my friend’s status and I thought that this was true for most social networking sites not just Facebook.

“The place where people add you as a friend & walk past you in the street. Where relationships are perfect & liars believe they are telling the truth and the world shows off that they are living a great life.” 

The worlds that we create on the internet are fictitious and can cause serious damage in our daily lives. However the results of our actions on the internet are not fictitious in fact it is far from it. In recent time in the news we have heard of cyber bullying and individuals killing themselves after being cyber-bullied. On the PBS frontline show we were introduced to a family that had to deal with the fact that their son was encouraged to commit suicide by someone that he met online. In a similar light, we see how President Obama was able to garner support from his online supporters. In fact there was a strategy to solicit supporters to come out and vote based on locality of online supporters and as such President Obama’s camp was able to garner support from a wide array of people instead of just pockets of voters.

                In concluding it is safe to say that our actions on the internet might be our escape from the reality of our present world. The consequences of these actions will indeed impact the very lives that we were trying to escape.