10 Reasons why I am afraid of the Internet

1. Tabs

I did a little experiment to see how many webpages are open for my everyday browsing – the mean is about 15 pages. There is rarely a time I finish extracting information from 1 page before I navigate to the next one, my attention span is furthered shrunk by the ‘tab’ technologies (and yes, mac’s expose helps too)

I have extreme tab-withdrawal symptoms when I use my school’s old IE-only M$ platform. Scary, ai?

2. Omnipresent of Self

I used to have pictures scattered everywhere, because of conferences I went to, some gatherings that we attend. The scary thing is you do not know what has taken pictures of you and what do they do with them (including those with your eyes closed). And Allah! Before you realized they are cached by Google and you’re then immoralized by Google’s spiders.

3. Stupid things we do that are online

Have you ever ranted about something somewhere online? Or do you have a ‘personal’ blog that is actually online when everyone can read? This is insane. I used to keep a xanga since my sister has one and it’s the time when siblings talk better through the internet than face-to-face (yes another sociological investigation). But in retrospect you do start to write more than random strangers need to know. I had not done anything that I regretted yet, but surely there are such cases.. I get particularly squeamish when I see people putting their intimate posts which include but not exclusively: love manifestos, personal feelings that scream I-need-attention, details about where they live and what they do (invitation to stalkers), mean attack to others (it’s not too fair when the people being attacked do not even know that you’re blackening their characters in the public? It makes you look bad as well), pictures of the blogger and his/her friends whom are not informed of their pictures being placed online..

Where is line between private and public?

4. E-stalking

Yes e-stalking is getting more popular, I reckon. You can basically get a sense of what a person is like before you actually meet him/her, such as a google background search, friendster/myspace/linkedin/facebooks or even youtube. It perfectly fulfills the fantasies of those who need an object of fetishism. Yeah this is pretty creepy, no?

5. Identity fabrication

Now that I recall, there are a lot of times Internet-mediated communications leads to either no communications or mis-communications. Especially when you’re thinking of complaining something to your friends and they took it defensively and the whole thing turns into a row… Hm, I guess it’s probably better to shout at each other than wasting our time drafting lengthy emails of rebuttal during work..

6.  Creating an ideal self online
Worst still, there are friends of yours whom you know predominantly through online sphere and there is this romanticization of who he/she is. Crap – only when you go out you realize he/she is a complete psycho? Was reading on Barry Wellman whether the Internet increases trust and networks (more linkages with people who are geographically distant from you) or hampers established social relationship (The internet distracts you from socializing with people around you). My take is – the Internet is dangerous for those who have not comes to terms with who they are. If your real self is far from your ideal self, very likely the internet provides enough social buffers for someone to create an idealized persona. Hm…

7.  Wikiality

A term coined by Colbert in his Colbert’s Report (original link at youtube but removed due to copyrights issue), Wikiality refers to how information on Wikipedia is taken as facts – my experience as a tutor is that too many students reference Wikipedia as if it is a legitimate source!  No, no, I am still a big fan of Wikipedia, but you got to remember information on Wikipedia is COLLABORATIVELY WRITTEN by literally ANYONE who has access to the internet!  Yes Wikipedia is amazing, it is free and it has dreams, but there is a reason why we need books and journals as well..

(con’t)