The Web Ebb

I'm coining that, by the way. If this becomes a real thing, then I'm the first one who came up with it. Even if someone else has used it, I testify that I haven't heard of it, so I came up with it independently. Anyway, on with the show.

Lately, I've noticed that some of my friends are either thinking of leaving Facebook or outright leaving it. Most of my friends have either closed down their MySpace or at least stopped using it. Five years ago, I would have seen five to ten of my friends on instant messenger at any given time, and now I see maybe two or three.

I don't know whether this is a real trend or just something in my demographic. I know that my generation, the ones in their mid to late twenties, was the first to be immersed completely in the digital age. I was around eleven or twelve when I first really started getting into computers: the internet, email, that sort of thing. I remember when I fell for one of the first "Bill Gates will send you money if you forward this to all your friends" ploys. I remember the days I would type in a topic, add .com, and see what came up. Those were the days before Google, when WebCrawler, Lycos, and Excite were my main search engines. Within a few years, everyone I knew had instant messenging and email. And a few years after that, we started hearing about just how plugged in we are. I've heard it said that the computers have gone from another activity you do to the way we live.

But these days, it seems like that mad rush into the digital frontier, the topic of so many TV specials and documentary films, is slowing down. Maybe it's across the board and maybe it's just those of us who have been immersed in it for more than a decade, but it feels like people are starting to come up for a breath. I've heard it said many times that the internet age sneaked up on us, and we found ourselves plugged in without realizing how far in we'd gone, but I think that awareness is becoming more common. We've been jacked in for so long that we're starting to see the effects it's really had on our lives--and we're starting to pull back.

I won't claim that I'm starting to use the computer less, just that my desire to do so has waned. I still get anxious if I go more than a couple of hours without checking my email. I still check Facebook at least three times a day. But when I do so, I spend much less time on it. I visit my favorite sites out of habit, but I don't stay long. I've stopped playing massively multiplayer online games and online RPGs. I'm no longer really interested in having conversations with people I've never met. That novelty has long since worn off.

I noticed a smaller web ebb a few years ago when people stopped using MySpace and blogs quite as much. For a while out of high school and into college, it felt like a half dozen of my friends had regular blogs. These days, no one I know posts more than once a week. Sure, there are sites like Twitter, but I don't know anyone in my age range who's really jumped into that. In particular, I feel like we are less and less likely to all get excited about something new, getting on some new service or program.

It's possible the web has become just so integrated into our lives that it's no longer exciting, but I don't think that's it. I think we're genuinely starting to drift away from our computers. In some small way, I think the real world is starting to have that novelty effect that the digital world had for us fifteen years ago. We've gone so long plugged in that unplugging has become the new frontier.

Cyberpunk Soon?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/7676552.stm
In the cyberpunk novel I wrote last November for National Novel Writing Month (and haven't brushed up since, despite "meaning to" ever since), the characters can either plug a computer directly into their brains or, if they're not ready for that step, wear a headset that both sends and receives information.

Well, this isn't quite up to that point yet, but a headset that can act as an input (but, sadly, not yet an output) device is definitely getting there.

I don't know whether I'll do National Novel Writing Month this year. It really depends on how many of my friends decide to do it. In this case, I'll definitely just follow the crowd. If it feels like most people are passing it up, don't want to do it, or aren't really serious about it, I don't think I will put in the effort. But we'll see.

That's no moon...

Remember the room with walls made of televisions in Fahrenheit 451? Well, I think you could make a wall out of this thing:

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/sharp-rolls-out-gigantic-108inch-lcd-226761.php

Now to find a 108-inch space somewhere in your home to put this monster. To be frank, I really don't know how I'd deal with having something like this in my home. I feel like I'd wake up one morning to find that it had organized the lesser machines under its iron control, and the living room and kitchen had seceded to form Techopia.

The other question: how the hell do you install it? Does it come with the Russian Olympic weightlifting team to carry it into your house? Will you have to knock a hole in your wall to get it in, or do you just stick it on the floor and built up the walls around it?

If every 10 inches of screen is another 2 feet back of viewing distance, as they told me when I bought my TV, then you'll have to watch this thing from 20 feet away: in other words, you'll be watching from the next room.

Wow. Now that is high-tech.