It’s crazy to think that I’m part of the first generation to grow up with the Internet.
I was young enough when the Internet went commercial in the late 90s that I could roll with its exponentially increasing flow of changing content without skipping a beat.
Since then, the Internet has permeated into nearly every aspect of human life.
For the first time in history, any single bit of information from any subject area is readily available within a few keystrokes and the click of a mouse.
Today, the average amount of time it takes a person to learn something is the amount of time it takes to look it up on Google or Wikipedia.
Since such information has never been so completely accessible by human hands, the Internet has fundamentally altered the way people perceive their personal identities.
The basic methodology by which one fashions his or her identity hasn’t changed much, though. It still involves the filtration of worldly stimuli to develop a sense of self.
But the incredible part about the Internet is, since it contains an entire planet’s worth of knowledge and stimuli, it releases a perpetual and unrelenting barrage of information and exposure. And that’s because it’s not just a network. It’s a network of networks.
Anyone can contribute to the Internet and anyone can use it. Unfortunately, this everyman idea behind the Internet makes it seem akin to a cavernous hall of mirrors, where the more information one is able to parse, the greater the search for one’s self becomes.
This data deluge also brings forth the issue of constant reassessment of one’s identity in concurrence with the knowledge accrued. Granted, there’s plenty of awful stuff on the Internet, but that’s just part of the whole package.
You see something on the Internet and it makes you think about yourself. You think about yourself and before you know it, you’re on the Internet looking for something else to add to your idea of yourself. See how that works?
We see ourselves looking at the Internet and the Internet looks back at us.
The Internet is an amorphous object in a constant state of digital flux, but this ever-shifting state of play is the very thing causing people to question what constitutes their identity.
People aren’t what they like on Facebook or what pictures they put up on Instagram or what music they listen to on Spotify. They aren’t the Reddit articles or Wikipedia pages they scroll through. They are not their Twitter feed.
They are the sum-total of what they receive from the Internet in combination with the Internet identities they construct.
The Internet provides people the tools to intimately engage with an infinite cycle of growth, reflection, reevaluation and repetition. In this aspect, the Internet maintains its stature as one of the last bastions of total freedom.
Reach the columnist at arjun.chopra.1@asu.edu
