A Beginner's Guide to Success in the Age of Internet for Dummies

All of us have witnessed the phenomenal changes internet has brought into our lives. In the past decade, the number of internet users has jumped almost fourfold to 2.5 billion. In simple, the magnificent rise of the internet cannot be denied. I presume that all of us are very familiar about the economic and social changes the internet has created so far, therefore I do not wish to shed any more light on it. What I wish to do is to point out the implications of the virtual world on the real world, which are often not perceived. The implication I plan on elaborating is the importance of self-narration in this age for one to be recognized by our techsavy society as a success.

Never in human history has it been so important for one to be able to tell one’s own story. I mean look around we have snapchat stories and Facebook timeline stories. Moreover, the outlay of all social networks is such that it displays the input information, given by user, in the form of a log of events. Job sites or professional networks such as linked ( Thank you Dr Rec for accepting my request) expects you to write a brief story about your professional or out of the norm experiences, while, on the other hand, snapchats wants you to make a story about what you did today, what you ate and all things which were once regarded as not so important.

In today’s world everyone has the physical equipment (eg Iphone) and software (Instagram, Snapchat) required to create an online story, and the people around are very interested in personal lives of others. The result is that we end up creating a society where one is judged by  his online story and one with the best story wins the game. Let me explain this empirically, If you have a good story on snap chat then you will possibly have more friends for you are valued more in your cultural. If you have a good story on linked in then you have a good paying job which translates into more friends and hence a better life. If you have a cool story on Facebook again you are valued as a popular figure in your social construct, and this gets you the attention . We should keep in mind that a good story means a story which appeals more to the cultural setting the person is in. We need to understand the concept, which is how these social networks define what is cool and what is not and the person who follows this culture efficiently and is able to display to others his ability to follow achieves “success” in the society.

The sad part about this is that we are entering a time frame where people who are equipped with the sufficient skills or knowledge but lack self-narrating skills are not getting the required attention. There has been a recent surge in demand for professionals who redo your online profile. What we can conclude is that as we become more and more digitalized the importance of self-narration will only increase. My advice to the readers for this “Success” is to make their presence felt on all social media platforms such as Twitter, Linkedin , Facebook and Youtube through which they should highlight their professional skills and market themselves interms of the traits which are desirable in your cultural and professional setting.

Religion: A marvelous Panopticon

Recently it was in news how government security agencies in USA secretly collect private data of millions of people across the country. The social media caught hold of this issue and went gaga over it, and the innocent and gullible public fell for this spectacle. Millions of American citizens expressed their contempt for the government on social media platforms such as twitter and facebook, for they were made to believe that NSA looks, with great interest, at their everyday emails, snapchats and web history. I do partly sympathize with those opposing NSA, however I feel that the public uproar was much hyped. They completely failed to understand the importance panopticism plays in keeping a large society together. At the same time, the fact that having access to ones sensitive information doesn’t mean the same accessing and using it was ignored.

NSA has no right to keep a check on companies or organization in other parts of the world, but as an agency responsible for security of the country it should definitely have the authority to keep a check on its own people. We need to understand that NSA propagates panopticism, which is a tool used to check the behavior of various members of the society and helps in maintaining peace and stability in the long run. I feel that it is a very powerful tool and that the focus of the public should not be to target panopticism but to make sure that only a responsible power controls it.            

 I am made to ask myself how is that the public hold such contempt for panopticism, when they on other hand worship the most deceiving yet greatest form of panopticons ever. As a child, I remember being told by my mother to be conscious of my actions, for God is always watching. Yes, I believe that religion is an institution of panopticism which instills desirable behavior in the followers by making them believe that they are being observed all the time. This institution of religion has not only created a panopticon which is not physically present yet very effective but has laid down demarcations between good, favorable behavior, and bad, unfavorable behavior. Though I do not believe in this panopticon, I am impressed by this marvel of deception which I cannot deny has so far helped in creating a stable society.

Fig 1: The eye of providence on one dollar bill, What do you think it signifies?

Blog 2: Do I exist or Do we exist?

In our last class we talked about René Descartes, father of modern philosophy of self. Descartes standpoint on the idea of self is very mind boggling, for he defines mind as a separate entity from the body. Moreover he argues that having thoughts is the proof of one's existence. This stands as a very reasonable argument. However Descartes complicates it further as Bolter in his essay “ Writing about self” quotes “Descartes takes leave of the world by doubting it all as the deception of evil spirit; that is, he questions the authority of his senses to report to him about the world.” Here Descartes  means that the world his senses perceive might be an illusion created by the mind, hence one cannot rely on one’s senses. Descartes rejects the existence of the network, external surroundings and only concentrates on the self.  His theory is very egocentric, yet it is constructed in such a way that I can find no reasonable argument to disprove that the people around him, the world around him is not a deception but real. At the same time neither can I  believe in his theory nor can I reject it. All I can do is offer the reader an argument in favor and against it.

Argument: I believe that our mind is like a plane canvas. Our interactions with the network or the outside world through Internet or physical meetings add material or paint to it. Then we, with this paint, create our own paintings which can be characterized as our thoughts. Hence our thoughts are outputs made from inputs from the material world, which are developed by our minds. Also we need to ask ourselves can all these languages, people, mathematical proofs and nature be a construction of our imagination. Can our minds be so immensely creative? 

In Favor: I was recently reading Al-Ghazali “Deliverance From Error”. In which a very interesting argument offered by Al-Ghazali to proof that we live in a world of false truth. He draws an analogy and says that when we sleep even the our  dreams appeal to us as real, but it is only when we get up we realize that they were imaginary. Hence, there is a possibility that we might be just be dreaming and this blog is not written by me but might be a figment of your own creation.

The Dilemma of Authority in 21st Century

Back in 1963, Stanly Milgram a psychologist from Yale shocked the world with his book "Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View".” In his study Milgram proved that people tend to obey an authority figureeven if the authority figure instructs them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience.

           The focus of this introduction is not to debate the topic of “Obedience to Authority”, the fact that people always follow an authority figure, but to establish it as an accepted fact that has been proved by behavioral sciences. The idea of my writing this is to point out how the idea of “Obedience to Authority” is wrapped around our society and how the internet challenges it today.
          Authority plays an integral role in our society. The authority lays down written laws, which are enforced upon other members of the society. Authority also influences the thinking of its members, a classic example would be an author influencing his readers or a teacher teaching (a form of influence) his students. The question of what makes an entity or organization an “authority” and how the roots of this authority is challenged today through Internet arises.

          We need to answer the question “ what is an authority?” In some very basic terms, authority is a group of individuals who control a seizable amount of power. Power can be gained through access to specific knowledge that is not available to others, the knowledge can range from speaking skills such as rhetoric to a professional understanding of markets and other things. Power can also be gained through one’s ability to influence other people or control over a medium that enables one to influence the masses. 

            However, in recent years it has been observed that there has been a trend where the power has shifted from the hands of few to those of the masses. This comes with the internet revolution and with the dawn of affordable electronic devices, which gives one immediate access to most of the knowledge banks in the world. Back in time, all these knowledge resources were available only to selected few. However, now through the platform of internet, an individual can challenge bigger cooperations, enterprises and other kinds of authority by raising his voice on this medium and getting in contact with like minded people and creating a mass opposition or gaining that certain type of knowledge which forms the advantage of the authority.

               Internet has unified individual units across the world and made them an authority in itself. The dawn of internet marks a crucial time in history because we are shifting towards  an era of prospering individual freedom. One might argue with my utopian view point but I am firm in my belief that the internet moment has not ended, but started and as new technologies such as tele-existance and more interactive social media platforms comes in future. There will be an even a greater shift towards unity. Meanwhile, what is an authority and what is not remains a dilemma.

Fig 1: An example of the Influence by Authority