It’s not that I’m a luddite. I mean, how can I be with a new blog that is hosted on some computer (or computers) humming away in god knows where? Words brought to you by wires, protocols, and billions of switches clicking away in just the right patterns. Global supply chains of designers, programmers, drivers, and factory workers. It’s more an issue of agency or complacency or simple curiousity.
You see, I left Facebook a few years ago in a fit of disgust. Disgust with the habits of communication that the social media ecosystem seemed to reinforce. Disgust with myself for falling into outrage-neediness cycles. Disgust with Facebook for so clearly representing a form of digital strip mining. It’s called “data mining” for a reason, and just as every unfettered extraction enterprise seems to leave behind swaths of barrenness, it’s no wonder that unregulated data mining might do the same thing. Only the “environmental impact” is harder to pinpoint when it comes to social media…or when it comes to a digital environment in which “free” really hides a quid pro quo in which a service is provided in return for the personal. That data is the coal seam, the oil field, the undeveloped land, and apps and web sites and devices are the drills, the explosives, and the ever more efficient tools for extracting the limited resource of a user’s living.
The gut feeling I had when I dropped Facebook, and began to examine my use of digital tools and media in general, was mainly that we were all being played for chumps. We did not own what we were posting on social media sites. We might delete photos and posts, but Facebook didn’t. We might forget the multitude of clicks made during a nostalgia-fueled binge of vicarious “lives,” but the swarm of apps surrounding us didn’t. Like the pens of a factory farm, the data was sorted, packed and fed onto the conveyor belts – the end result not much different from the cellophane covered cut of meat we find in the grocery store.
That was my gut feeling, at any rate, and admittedly, I’m not going to presume that it applies to everyone. It could simply be a generational thing, or an age-related thing. Motivations change with age, and my two twenty-something daughters seem to have a much more utilitarian and healthily cavalier attitude towards digital technology.
Let’s stick with the metaphor of a feedlot. It’s not that I’m opposed to eating meat, it’s more that I am uncomfortable with the dominant system that produces meat. An attitude towards living creatures framed by the cells of a spreadsheet, units of efficiency, and narrow metrics of productivity. And that unease extends to the cognitive, behavioral, and moral habits that develop when one exists within such a system. As a psychologist who studies habit formation and adaptive behavior, I’m well aware of how beliefs and behaviors are shaped by the environment. How stated values can be at odds with behavior, and how habits can sneak up on us.
But there are other approaches, and this blog is an attempt to establish my own approach. If I’m going to post photos for the benefit of family and friends, I want it done on my own terms (to the degree that this is possible on a “world wide web”). If I’m going to spend time thinking through an idea, I want to have and to take the time to fumble around until something emerges that feels right. No fishing for “likes” or “thumbs” or “hitting the subscribe button.” No “branding” or zingers that are supposed to “prove” my superiority over another. The attempt is to create a space that is mine and which I will choose to share with others.
Let’s see where this goes.