In what ways has the digital age affected our perceptions of privacy, community, and solitude?

[Final_Choice]

In what ways has the digital age affected our perceptions of privacy, community, and solitude?

 

[sserafim]

I think that the digital age has allowed for increasing loneliness and isolation as online interactions get substituted for in-person ones. I think there's a lack of genuine, authentic connection to another human being in this day and age. I that people don't have a sense of community anymore.

I also think that people have created online personas (like on Instagram) which aren't their true self. Rather, they use those personas to show off how they're living their best life. Some people are also kind of like online influencers, they're famous online. You can really be anyone you want online. This is partly due to anonymity and the anonymous nature of the internet (which builds upon privacy, and vice versa, the two kind of feed off of each other), as well as the internet being a virtual world.

Your online persona is kind of like a mask which hides your true self (your in-person self, but that isn't your true self either because you only exist in other people's perceptions of you). There are also different online communities and subcultures, and you probably have a different persona for each one.

 

[DarkRange55]

The first thing that comes to mind is privacy is something that used to be sacred.
But obviously, it's had a lot more effects and impacts than just that…

 

[dragonofenvy]

How famous you are online now trumps the friendships you have. People want to be famous and will do anything for followers. Popularity used to mean being friends with people at school or your neighbors, now it's how many views you get. Solitude is now a thing that is terrifying for many, admired by some, and hated by others. I think a minority of people enjoy times of solitude. Bear in mind I'm not talking about isolation, but temporary times that you spend with just yourself. For privacy, as DarkRange55 said, it's something that used to be important for people, but now that everything we do on the internet is harvested and stored, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. People do not care who sees what they shop for, what they look for on social media and search engines, etc. as well as whether the government is spying on them or not. Lack of privacy is the norm. Wanting to be a private individual makes you dangerous to the government now too, but maybe I'm being paranoid.

 

[BlessedBeTheFlame]

"We are formless. We are the very discipline and morality that Americans invoke so often. How can anyone hope to eliminate us? As long as this nation exists, so will we. Don't you know that our plans have your interests -not ours- in mind? The mapping of the human genome was completed early this century. As a result, the evolutionary log of the human race lay open to us. We started with genetic engineering, and in the end we succeeded in digitizing life itself. But there are things not covered by genetic information. Human memories, ideas. Culture. History. Genes don't contain any record of human history. Is it something that should not be passed on? Should that information be left at the mercy of nature? We've always kept records of our lives. Through words, pictures, symbols... from tablets to books... But not all the information was inherited by later generations. A small percentage of the whole was selected and processed, then passed on. Not unlike genes, really.

But the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness. Never fading, always accessible. Rumors about petty issues, misinterpretations, slander...All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate. It will only slow down social progress, reduce the rate of evolution. You seem to think that our plan is one of censorship. What we propose to do is not to control content, but to create context. The digital society furthers human flaws and selectively rewards development of convenient half-truths. Just look at the strange juxtapositions of morality around you. Billions spent on new weapons in order to humanely murder other humans. Rights of criminals are given more respect than the privacy of their victims. Although there are people suffering in poverty, huge donations are made to protect endangered species. Everyone grows up being told the same thing. Be nice to other people... But beat out the competition! You're special. Believe in yourself and you will succeed. But it's obvious from the start that only a few can succeed...

You exercise your right to 'freedom' and this is the result. All rhetoric to avoid conflict and protect each other from hurt. The untested truths spun by different interests to churn and accumulate in the sandbox of political correctness and value systems. Everyone withdraws into their own small gated community, afraid of a larger forum. They stay inside their little ponds leaking whatever "truth" suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large. The different cardinal truths neither clash nor mesh. No one is invalidated, but nobody is right. Not even natural selection can take place here. The world is being engulfed in "truth".

And this is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

We're trying to stop that from happening. It's our responsibility as rulers. Just as in genetics, unnecessary information and memory must be filtered out to stimulate the evolution of the species. Who else could wade through the sea of garbage you people produce, retrieve valuable truths and even interpret their meaning for later generations?

That's what it means to create context."