I used to love technology.
I played LAN death matches with my parents when Doom II released. I was fairly competent with DOS at the age of eight, and built my first gaming rig at twelve. I had a cell phone roughly the size of my forearm for "emergency use," and I even had an email address before I had anyone to correspond with (personal computers were still considered a fad).
Today, as a young adult, I feel ambivalent towards many modern conveniences.
I enjoy online gaming, DVDs by mail, days worth of music in my pocket, and so on, but there is a dark side that has crept in with these almost imperceptibly over time. The Panopticon, if you will.
As a private and reserved person, I am having difficulty becoming acclimated to constant availability and scrutiny. The following are but a few examples of irksome technological issues that I would prefer to live without:
-I must check my email multiple times each day. If I do not, I may miss some urgent piece of news relating to school or work that could potentially cause me to lose standing.
-I am expected to answer my phone at any hour of the day. If I am busy doing something else and do not pick up, I am presumed dead or, at the very least, antisocial.
-Even though I don't update my Facebook page more than once a month, some distant acquaintance will inevitably call or email me about my personal business because they saw it on someone ELSE's Facebook post.
-Reinventing myself after high school became virtually impossible as former classmates began "friending" my new college classmates on social networking sites.
-In some of my favorite games, the exact dates and times I complete given "achievements" are logged, meaning people can discover the exact times I have been playing.
-Since I don't subscribe to some of the more recent trends such as Twitter, I am actually considered BACKWARDS by the very people who didn't even have computer access when I was a child...
So, fellow Escapists, has the modern Panopticon posed any challenges in your lives? For the younger folks (high school on down), is it easier if you have always lived during the communications boom? Do you feel that the benefits outweigh the detriments? Will there be an inevitable backlash or is privacy an antiquated idea?
I played LAN death matches with my parents when Doom II released. I was fairly competent with DOS at the age of eight, and built my first gaming rig at twelve. I had a cell phone roughly the size of my forearm for "emergency use," and I even had an email address before I had anyone to correspond with (personal computers were still considered a fad).
Today, as a young adult, I feel ambivalent towards many modern conveniences.
I enjoy online gaming, DVDs by mail, days worth of music in my pocket, and so on, but there is a dark side that has crept in with these almost imperceptibly over time. The Panopticon, if you will.
As a private and reserved person, I am having difficulty becoming acclimated to constant availability and scrutiny. The following are but a few examples of irksome technological issues that I would prefer to live without:
-I must check my email multiple times each day. If I do not, I may miss some urgent piece of news relating to school or work that could potentially cause me to lose standing.
-I am expected to answer my phone at any hour of the day. If I am busy doing something else and do not pick up, I am presumed dead or, at the very least, antisocial.
-Even though I don't update my Facebook page more than once a month, some distant acquaintance will inevitably call or email me about my personal business because they saw it on someone ELSE's Facebook post.
-Reinventing myself after high school became virtually impossible as former classmates began "friending" my new college classmates on social networking sites.
-In some of my favorite games, the exact dates and times I complete given "achievements" are logged, meaning people can discover the exact times I have been playing.
-Since I don't subscribe to some of the more recent trends such as Twitter, I am actually considered BACKWARDS by the very people who didn't even have computer access when I was a child...
So, fellow Escapists, has the modern Panopticon posed any challenges in your lives? For the younger folks (high school on down), is it easier if you have always lived during the communications boom? Do you feel that the benefits outweigh the detriments? Will there be an inevitable backlash or is privacy an antiquated idea?
