Who in the World Wide Web am I?

Through the ages we have been puzzled by the complexity of our own mind. Along with that, came the fundamental questions about the origin and purpose of our existence in the universe. As the age progresses from stone to digital and our lives become more and more digitalized, the questions remain, but the realm expanded from material to virtual.

I stumbled upon this question as I was watching The Social Network. Although the story maybe fictional, I was blown away by how Mark Zuckerberg (the character almost robotically and brilliantly played by Jesse Eisenberg) transformed the idea of self-obsession into a socially accepted form of defining oneself through one’s social circle.

In virtual universe, we were ideas, and when we started to input ourselves in source codes, we became an entity. Code by code, we began to have an online presence and started to materialize in binaries. Our data grew as we fed more and more of ourselves into our online persona and our new environment “adjusted” accordingly to accommodate us. As our interactions intensify, we learned to get used to and discovered other inhabitants of the World Wide Web.

A person’s Internet chronological age, in my opinion, started when somebody began to get acquainted to the Internet. So, the Internet is full of relatively “young” citizen who are treading the web lightly to live harmoniously. In Internet chronological age, I should be very young, only a teenager. As an adolescent in this brave new world, I think I am entitled to feel a little lost and to have the strong urge to identify myself with a certain (peer) group. Luckily, the triple-w provides the information centre for all questions known to humanity: google search. And, with the introduction of anonymity, I no longer hesitate on joining a certain group with similar interest. But the existential question remains upon realizing the obscurity of my existence in both real and virtual world: who in the World Wide Web am I?

I am a citizen of no country with a social strata defined only to the extent of photo tagging and status updates. I don’t spend my time in forums and chat rooms (but I know people who do), and that only shows that I don’t have a social life. I’m linked to various social media but I just omit my presence and change providers when I feel like they can no longer accommodate me or they just got old. I have lived and died involuntarily along with the rise and fall of different social media with a trace of documentation maybe somewhere in another continent. In short, every time I ask the question, I am back to the beginning of the creation of my online presence: I am a cluster of source codes.

Maybe that’s what Mark Zuckerberg saw when he came up with the idea of Facebook: we are a wealth of data that are willing to voluntarily write our own codes in order to give shape, size, color, and voice to our virtual entities. Then, naturally, comes the interactions, and, voilá, we are a profile page (with pictures!). Perhaps the appropriate existential question for the digital universe should be: What is my algorithm?

cockaigne™

Follow me @cockaigneaddict

No, this writing has nothing to do with promoting my twitter page, but it has something to do with the overwhelming streams of information that we receive everyday from people, institutions, products, government, and so on through various media—twitter included. Some information I can take but most of it is just too much for me to handle, which is why I’m writing this blog.

I’m connected to my social media page most of the time, if not 24 hours. That is how I receive information and news. I was ignorant and I thought I could stay ignorant of what is happening around me but I find it harder and harder to do today. Being connected to my friends is like having the feeling that I’m hanging out with them all the time and that’s comforting. But receiving news about hate crimes, discrimination, and, in short, stupidity—local and international—is enough to ruin my day. Hence, I’m starting to avoid all news, especially local ones.

One of the reasons why I don’t follow the local news (too much) is because I get upset more often than I feel informed or moved by the story. It seems that our journalism is stuck at the level where it only serves to trigger sensation and opinion than to invoke critical thinking and hone social awareness for long-term effect. In other words, news doesn’t sell, sensation does.

I know what is written in the news is only a small part of what is actually happening around us and that fact also frightens me. Things happen and I can no longer ignore them. I am aware of the economic motives that the journalists and medias are facing, and let’s admit it, everyone has his/her own agendas. Nevertheless, I doubt that using hatred to fuel our cause would ever get us anywhere.

We still have a long way to go and we are taking a step back one pessimism at a time for every news sensation that we pay attention to and for every time we think that we do not want to be a part of the world because of our perceived helplessness. Every ignorant person (like me) and non-mainstream people (like some of you) would hate to admit that when a controversial news hits the headlines, we react. From shudder to tantrum, we react. For a moment, we are distracted from our orbits and lost our point of view of the world, which is living and dying as it revolves. It turns out, we do have a standpoint, and, as much as I hate to admit it,  I care.

cockaigne™

How to Tell If You Have a Crazy Stalker Behind You

This post is taken from my Friendster blog. This is the link to the original post: [cRazY.w0rLD.sUrviVaL.9uId3], posted on Thursday, November 3rd, 2005 at 10:21 am.

How to tell if you have a crazy stalker behind you:

1. If you are one of those people who will not forget faces, you will notice that you think you have seen that guy or girl before but you don’t remember where.
2. Even if you keep forgetting people’s faces you will still notice that the guy or girl you see standing in the street corner looks so familiar but still you can’t remember where you have seen him or her.
3. Later, you will realize that you keep seeing that person.
4. Are you a person with fixed schedule? Get used to running into that strange person by ‘accident’ in the places you visit regularly.
5. Your dog is gone and the last time you heard it barking was when you hear a suspicious noise as if someone was breaking and entering your house.
6. Your personal stuffs start missing. Apparently, someone did broke in to your house but took nothing valuable. Things usually missing: bras, underwear, make-up kit (eyelash curler included), photographs, shirt, and the likes.
7. When you look at yourself in the mirror, you keep seeing double but you are sure there is nothing wrong with your eyes because what you see is not really your double but more like a bad cover version of yourself.
8. Now, look closely in the mirror. Does your double appear to be standing just a few feet behind you?
9. You can see that he or she is wearing the stuffs that are missing from your closet, your personal stuffs (and in some cases he or she might be holding you dog’s dead body).

It’s official: YOU HAVE A CRAZY STALKER BEHIND YOU!

cockaigne™