Ramble on How Technology Makes Us Antisocial

Yes, that's right. Facebook makes you antisocial. I mean, not within facebook, obviously. It's a social networking site. What I mean is, it makes you antisocial in real life. Not completely, obviously. Most of us have friends in real life too. And I know I'm a really big hypocrite, but I feel like rambling about it anyway.

My dad just got a crackberry. That thing can get internet all the time. You know all those things you do to procrastinate doing your homework because the internet has endless possibilities? Well now you can take that anywhere. So we were in a shoe store, and he was watching ESPN.com refreshing the baseball game play-by-play. We were standing in a restaurant entrance waiting for my mom, and instead of talking to me, he was checking his email. Antisocial. And I really want one, too, which just makes it even worse. I don't claim immunity from all this. The temptation to retreat into our world of screens and computers and updates is everywhere.

But you know what's not included in screens and computers and updates? Real live people, who you can actually get to know. As much as I love to facebook stalk, you can never really know what someone's like just by looking at their facebook profile. The only thing you can say for sure about them is what they chose to put on their facebook profile. Even now, there are people who I stalked on facebook before getting to know them, and now it almost seems like their facebook persona and their real life persona are two different people. But it's natural to think you can really know someone that way, since there's so much information on there. Plus there's the whole communication thing; people don't say the same things online that they'd say in person. Sure, who doesn't like it when people like their statuses and comment on them? I like dialogues online, and feedback on my pictures. It's awesome to get 500,000 wall posts on your birthday, but you know what? That's cheating. You wouldn't have known it was my birthday if facebook hadn't told you, unless you're one of the handful of people who actually know my birthday. (It's May 20th, by the way.) Sure, sometimes facebook is an extension of my IRL social life. Maybe I was talking to someone about something in the DC and then left a link about it on their wall. And sometimes it's just a really convenient way to get in touch with that random kid from Spanish class to ask about homework, or to stay in touch with friends who don't live near me who I don't get to see that often. But it can never replace actual friendships, actual late-night secret sharing and hugs and adventures.

My dad and I were also talking once about having TVs in restaurants. It's just another example of technology being everywhere, grabbing your attention away from the people right in front of you. When I'm sitting across from my parents at a table, and some random hockey game is going on above their heads, I'm going to watch the hockey game just because it's moving. I don't have the slightest interest in watching hockey. But it makes me antisocial, and I know I'm not the only one who does it.

I mean, come on...right now I'm in the car with my parents, driving home from New Hampshire. And you know what I'm doing? I'm typing on my laptop, headphones in ears, multitasking between this, editing photos, and texting a friend. It's borderline irritating when my parents want to talk to me because I have to make the music go away and break my focus from the illuminated screen in front of me.

Technology. Progressing the entire world to new levels of awesomeness, and also making us that much more antisocial.

Ramble on Internet Wiretapping

Take a look at this article, which was in the subject line of my NY Times email this morning.

The gist is, terrorists used to communicate via means that the government could easily tap - mainly the telephone - but now there are ways of communication that the government doesn't have the technological ability intercept. For example, encrypted emails (such as those trasmitted by BlackBerries), Facebook, and Skype. So now, the Obama administration is planning to submit a bill to Congress that would basically require such means of communication to be interceptable.

According to the article, new requirements would be:

• Communications services that encrypt messages must have a way to unscramble them.
• Foreign-based providers that do business inside the United States must install a domestic office capable of performing intercepts.
• Developers of software that enables peer-to-peer communication must redesign their service to allow interception.

I can't decide how I feel about this. Of course, my gut reaction is "Hey government, get off my Facebook and get out of my inbox!" I mean no one wants the government to be able to hack into their Skype conversations or arrest them because they wrote "Obama sucks" on someone else's Facebook wall. Plus, it's reminding me of post-9/11 Bush all over again (although to be fair, most of the information I have on the whole arresting-innocent-people thing comes from Farenheit 911). But still, I thought we were maybe moving away from the Patriot Act and back towards privacy except with a warrant.

Then again, maybe it's not such a bad thing. Why should there be such a loophole, such a gap in our security where terrorists can easily communicate? Before the technologies developed away from it, the government could always intercept communications. And really, the main purpose of the FBI and the CIA is to keep us safe. This supposed bill wouldn't even give them more power per se, it would just maintain the investigative powers the government already has, and anyway, no one says that they're going to be banging down doors and torturing people for three days just because of an "Obama sucks" comment. So it's fine, as long as they don't abuse this power. Right? Or should they not be able to tap private communications in the first place? When is it Big Brother, and when is it protecting the well-being of American citizens?

For example, the Times Square bombing that failed in May might've been prevented completely if the government had been able to intercept the terrorists' communications. Investigations into things like drug cartels would be possible. It seems like it's in our best interests for our governmental intelligence agencies not to be hindered in working to stop terrorists. What they do makes all of us safer. So where's the line where those of us who have nothing to fear sacrifice some personal privacy in order to increase national security? But then again, how can we really trust that the government will use that power well if it's granted? Based on the fact that technologies have moved away from being interceptable by the government, is it really fair to require the creators of such technologies to put time, money, and effort into altering their systems just so that the government can hack in?

Mmkay, I think this ramble is long enough. We'll see if this plan even goes anywhere. But it surprised me when I read about it this morning, and then I talked about it with some people at lunch, and I figured it'd be a good topic to ramble about.