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Photo credits: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ter-burg/6477358187/sizes/o/[/caption]
All of us are a part of the Internet, the origins of which date back to 1960s when it was a research project commissioned by the US government. Fast forward 50 years and we find that the lives of an unbelievably huge chunk of the world population revolve around the Internet and with a force that is stronger than we care to give a thought about.
Forget for the time being the reasons and planned activities that were supposed to be achieved through the Internet when it was born. In the current
times Internet is all about content — creation and consumption. Content that is created varies in the form it is presented — audio, video, textual — and in what it relates to — real time news, health tips, general knowledge, sports, education, entertainment. Similarly there are various ways in which it is found and subsequently consumed — newsletters, RSS feeds, social sharing, search engines etc.
Earlier, online content consumption used to be more intentional and selective in the sense that we used to know what exactly it was that we wanted from the internet and we looked out for that particular content, mostly through the help of one of the many search engines — Google and Yahoo being more prominent than the others.
With the evolution of Internet and the netizens, this intentional-ity associated with content consumption has decreased - whether for the good or the bad we would have to see. But nowadays, content consumption is based more on what is available rather than what is being sought. How we, the internet users, consume content is increasingly depending on what is being fed to us as opposed to what we intend to consume. Wherever we are on the internet, we stumble upon an infinite supply of new content — which we might or might not be looking for — through myriad mediums — current content based suggestions, editor recommendations, friends’ social sharing to name a few.
Here, a similarity of this situation can be drawn to television. During earlier days, before set top box, or even cable TV for that matter, became popular, when we had only one or two channels to watch on television, we were more selective of what we watch. Some of us would want to watch only news, others only the movie broadcasts, some others would switch on the television only to watch a sports match. People would consume the desired content and then they would switch themselves off from this consumption-mode and carry on doing whatever they intended to do with their lives – their real lives. And then came the content blast on television and we suddenly found ourselves drowned in a sea of TV series, reality TV shows etc. — more content than we could or ever wanted to consume. The weaker minds got swayed easily, the stronger ones gradually. Eventually, all of us got into that mode where we found ourselves browsing through different channels consuming whatever it was that the idiot box was showing.
Internet, I believe, is an unintended successor for this designation of idiot box. Earlier, we used to find and consume whatever it was we went on the Internet for and then we used to switch off our consumption-mode and carry on with our real lives. Whereas now, we go online, not always with an intention of consuming some particular content, and get drowned in the sea of excess content, and in the process forget to switch off the consumption-mode and as a result become unable to carry on with our real lives. This consumption pattern is so overwhelming that we don’t even realize we are drowning in this sea of content - curse relativity if you must, we find ourselves doing just fine with respect to our peers - for everyone we know in our real lives is also drowning along with us giving us a Utopian feeling of everything being well. Gradually, the real life is forgotten and we start living in a new virtual life that we and the people around us have created by continually consuming the content that we never intended to give any fish about.
The situation is like a bubble where we are continuously eating food, mostly junk, that we don’t need and consequently we are getting obese with the result that we gradually lose the feeling of what it means to eat exactly when and exactly what we want. It would have to be seen in future when this bubble bursts and what the repercussions of this burst would be, meaning what the consequences of losing our real lives would be.
However, as always, all is not lost! There, like always, is hope, still!
The most important part would be to realize that we have become an inflating bubble. Post this realization, a simple ‘why’ needs to be asked to put a stop to this excess consumption. There needs to be an introspection which ideally should get triggered as a result of asking this simple why. This why may also be applied while watching television. The simple question that needs to be asked is, “Why is it that I am consuming the current content?” Most of the times, if the consumption is not intentional or due to an explicitly pre-decided purpose, the answer would come out to be something like, “Oh, I think I’m just passing my time,” or “Well, I gotta do something, why not this?” If you find yourself coming to this answer very frequently, this means, in my opinion, you have lost your real life. You have left it way behind and now you are a part of the virtual life where you are no longer the consumer but have become the consumed. Infinitely better than this mindless, purposeless and directionless consumption would be to have an end-goal in mind and then consume relevant content towards achieving that end. Be selective and driven by a goal. You would then find an answer to the why of consuming any particular content. Overtime, that end could also evolve into better goals that are more in sync with your real life.
Asking this why is very important in order to save us from being consumed, from being drowned, from being a bubble that would eventually burst. Internet – for all its benefits and for all its goodness - deserves this small bit of effort from the future generation of its creators to prevent itself from being labelled as the new idiot box.
(Click here to read the same on medium.com)