( The email )

Anna, Thy Charms
by Robert Burns

Anna, thy charms my bosom fire,
And waste my soul with care;
But ah! how bootless to admire,
When fated to despair!

Yet in thy presence, lovely Fair,
To hope may be forgiven;
For sure 'twere impious to despair
So much in sight of heaven.

I remember a time when the internet was the newest hope for polity, markets, and even general human development. For polity, the internet was going to be a new town square, where ideas would be exchanged, new forms of civil society would emerge, and Tocquevillian democracy would be exhumed. Advanced democratic regimes would be made more accountable through the transparency that the internet would provide, and authoritarian regimes would be under the constant threat of citizens organizing for democracy through the internet. For markets, the internet was going to make commerce easier, be a boon for new services innovation and productivity growth, and reshape capitalism. A UC Berkeley professor even published an article in Foreign Affairs asking if the internet meant "the end of the business cycle." For human development, the internet would drive information, on any subject, to a zero marginal cost, thus greatly empowering people, especially once the hardware also became cheap. Thomas Jefferson's anticipation for human progress, where every man would be an "Aristotle in mind," could finally be more than just a ridiculous liberal teleological view.

Unfortunately, nearly 15 years after the start of the internet craze, instead of those developments, the web has degenerated into a banal Saturnalian fest of idiotic narcissism.

Though not all of it is bad. I still visit blogs, both to read about subjects I enjoy and keep up with certain friends' lives. I also appreciate that Facebook allows me to stay in touch with friends who have moved far away; a very useful thing to have when globalization threatens to dissolve so many of our friendships.

However, the past five to seven years seem to have been on a particular downward trend. I remember when Facebook was about friends posting pictures of trips they've taken, or family moments they've had. For a moment, I even got to play Scrabble with friends 300 miles away. Now, instead of such things, the information I get on Facebook is about how someone is "having a busy Thursday," "eating a burrito," or "headed out with the dog." None of these things were worthwhile to mention before, when you were hanging out with your friends in the real world, and for good reason - because it's boring as shit.

I also really don't care about how you just found a pink, lonely cow on your farm; I don't want to join your imaginary mafia; and I don't need to know which decade best represents you. None of these things is allowing me to get to know you better, or us to even converse.

And it's getting worse. Much, much worse. Now Twitter threatens to put the banal chatter on overdrive. Via their 140-character limit, the entire site is designed to force you to only post the most superficial things. People tweet every single location they're at and every single thing they're eating, or post nonsensical one-liners that are carefully, and consciously, designed to make them seem quirky and whimsical.

Exactly what were these people expecting me to respond with when they posted these things?

There are four distinct problems at hand. First, this overload on information takes time away from actual social activities we could all be doing. And it's not just about my digital information consumption; it's about me and everyone around me. Everyone claims they're too busy for anything when you know they've wasted half the day updating their social networking sites with inane or banal information. We can't do more traditional social activities together because we've paid the opportunity cost that comes with reading and posting stupid shit on the internet.

Second, this reduced face-to-face social time, I'm convinced, is going to erode people's basic social skills. People are becoming less socially adept; they can't pick up on basic social cues, read body language, or be good conversationalists. To make matters worse, awkward is somehow the new charming (a phenomenon celebrated by hipster movies).

Third, narcissism is on the rise. The internet seems to be more and more about self-promotion, self-aggrandizement, and self-absorption. We've completely lost touch with what's a reasonably engaging topic. Any half-baked, banal thought that pops into our heads, there are a thousand mediums to broadcast it to the world, and we're thrilled that a thousand people pretend to listen. It's as though we've created an environment where everybody can have the experience of being an only child with overly attentive parents, or being both a celebrity and their own paparazzi at the same time.

Fourth, it's making us dumber. Not only is none of this giving us fodder for conversation - either in real life or online - but it's dulling our ability to create interesting ideas and perspectives. We went from blogging, which has no character limit and gave us a great forum for creating conversations, to Tumblr, which just allows people to post pictures and quotes (though Tumblr is still much better than Twitter, which won't even allow you to post nice pictures). People can't even read more than a page anymore on the internet without moving on. What happened to the pleasure of "getting lost in a text" or feeling shame for "having nothing interesting to say?" People used to enjoy reading, learning new things, and contributing to interesting conversations. Now, instead of creating everyday Aristotles, we've created everyday Paris Hiltons with ADHD.

None of this should be taken as though I don't enjoy reading friends' blog entries on their own personal lives. I enjoy writing to my friends and reading about what's going on with them. I'm only begrudge the things that are posted that would never be discussed in another medium. For example, blogs are an effective way for me to hold conversations with friends in other regions in the way I would hold them if they were in my kitchen. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer people are creating conversations online - either on topics regarding themselves or the external world. The internet has moved from Livejournal to Tumblr to Twitter, and now we're seeing a Twitterization of Livejournal. It's the death of conversation that I regret.

I'm not sure what the remedy is. As of late, I've used the "hide" button on Facebook to stop getting certain friend's updates without them being offended. What I really want, however, is a button that revives more traditional social activities, and brings back conversation. The internet didn't revive democracy, it hasn't brought down authoritarian regimes, it hasn't ended the business cycle, and it hasn't made us everyday Aristotles. But can't we at least use it to have good conversations?

When General Motors announced the closing of their Moraine, Ohio assembly plant last year, two Dayton area filmmakers set to work on documenting the impact of GM’s decision on the factory workers and local community. The resulting film, "The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant," is a really moving look at a group of hard-working American auto workers. The film has no narration; it's (almost) entirely composed of workers just talking into the camera while they're at home, work, and the local bar. Based on the few experiences I've had with Midwestern, blue collar workers, I appreciated how well the documentary portrayed the good character of a class of Americans I've found to be so uniformly decent.

From a New York Times review of the documentary:

The film is relatively free of clichés about hard-working, homespun middle-American life, but these are recognizably upper Midwesterners. Time after time workers who choke up while talking to the camera politely apologize for their displays of emotion. (Imagine if that happened in reality television.) A white-haired woman drives away after her final shift, having “shot my last truck.” How did that go? she’s asked. She thinks for a second. “It’s different.”

The closing of the Moraine plant meant the direct loss of more than 1,000 jobs and, by one estimate given in the film, up to 10,000 jobs in the community as a whole. Globalization and the destruction of American industrial life are inevitably the film’s themes, but as the final day approaches, what people most want to talk about is pride in their workplace — the three-quarter-mile-long building still inspires awe in those who have worked there for decades — and the loss of the family they have found on the factory floor.