Off The Grid
A sudden, visceral, perhaps irrational mindset presented itself the other day.
It started with an email: my PayPal account had been charged $699.99 for Google Play, with an invitation to call customer service with any questions; yeah, had questions i.e. had never set up a PayPal account, know nothing about Google Play; called the number, case # 9841, five thousand dollars racked up so far; the cause, they said, must have been a "leaked" IP number combined with my email address; will investigate.
What an idiot. Reflex over reflection. Of course it was phishing. Fortunately, I’d disclosed no financial info but my phone number was now outed. Discovered one could change an IP number (btw, IP8.com) by simply disconnecting and reconnecting the router. Did that one better. In lieu of trashing my computer, I left the router disconnected, went to bed, opened the window and listened to the rain.
The feeling of total isolation from anything outside of pure nature was exhilarating. Lifus Interruptus provided some quiet time in which to reflect, to savor, to ponder a life more permanently disconnected from technology.
Among the conclusions: the devil has now foreclosed on the Faustian bargain made long ago i.e. the internet has insinuated itself into our very souls. Seduced by efficiency, man has sacrificed his agency, slowly at first, reduced to a node on a network – vulnerable to an intrusive world. Label it paranoia if that helps.
To be sure, Member Monday has heralded network “connections.” We've indulged ourselves in all sorts of fantasies about the power and the promise of interconnected communities, even global states MM 9/19/22 The Network State and MM 9/26/22 The Network State (Part II). We’ve even envisioned the virtual sharing of otherwise-isolated lives at a sensory-replicated human level MM 10/31/22 The Network Community.
At a cost. We’d previously addressed the insidious way the hyper-connecting, hyper-distracting, hyper-intruding, hyper-demanding internet has enslaved so many to a manufactured reality, a kind of estrangement from the self (e.g. MM 10/3/16 Internet Addiction), often in the name of commercialism (MM 11/30/20 Social (Media) Bias).
Now apply that same inexorable force at scale. You’ve likely witnessed the way iron filings instantaneously snap into pattern-like alignment with a magnetic force. Might that simple visual not serve at least as a model for the otherwise-inexplicable way cultural patterns suddenly change? Perhaps a whole society becomes vulnerable to an estrangement from itself.
An off-the-net mentality, almost by definition, responds to the kind of wisdom that bubbles from the ground up. Sometimes lost in the devolution of our country into four versions of America (MM 7/12/21 Four Americas) there is still the quaint notion that we have a government of the people, by the people, for the people. We might discuss whether elections have been reduced to little more than local proxy wars furthering top-down agendas and, if so, the role of the net as the driving enabler.
And, now, we have what could be the final spike through a functioning representative democracy i.e. the essential outsource of our very governance to the power and influence of AI's generative artificial intelligence, the subject of our focus (WP) piece Our Democracy Isn't Ready For the Next Level Of Approaching AI. Talk about estrangement.
Our broader discussion will center around the societal yearning for connection – the authentic, human sort – whether it be to others or to nature. That’s the paradox introduced by technology i.e. sometimes you just have to disconnect the router, open the window, and listen to the rain.