Romance in the Information Age

Christine Rosen, in her article, “Romance in the Information Age”, poses some of the fundamental questions in the age of the Internet. To what extent do our technologies transform who we are? What challenges do these technologies pose to our ability to meet and maintain a successful relationship that begins on the Internet? Can technology and/or science lead to a more meaningful and compatible relationship?

In the Clouds? For the Birds?

Where my information lives

Cloud Computing?

  The article on cloud computing brought up many issues I have never considered

  Perhaps as many people, I have no idea where my data is physically stored. I have this naïve (very naïve) idea that there really is a cloud upon which my data drifts around safe and secure in heaven.

  From a legal perspective, if there were any type of legal issue, I have no idea where the place of jurisdiction is. Again, an image pops into my head of clouds, is that really a country? 

  How secure is my data? Since I really don’t have any trade secrets and I am not (really) a covert undercover agent, I assume that no one is interested in my information. So cross this issue of the list of things that keep me up at night.

Another issue is intellectual property rights. Under whose domain is my creative work if it is stored on the cloud?  The country where the data is warehoused, the country where the work was created, pretty complicated.

  Musings aside, this was the first time I understood the complexities of the legal, ethical and environmental issues of data storage. Are we empowering a few major corporations with vast control of our information and identities? As a country, are we making the right choices when it comes to cloud computing?  Are we selling our knowledge base, and perhaps our soul based on cheap electricity and space?  Who is overseeing the complicated legal issues regarding information policy? 
  The next time you log into your Google account (or any cloud based application) think carefully about where that information is going, who you are sharing it with, and what your legal rights are.

Do you love your gadgets?

You love your iPhone. Literally

  This week an article appeared on the op-ed page in the NY Times telling us that we "literally" love our iphones. The ringing of the iPhone apparently activates the cortex of the brain which is most often associated with feelings of love and compassion.

  This week we focused on the issue of identity. Who are we in relationship to our gadgets? Are we having more “personal” interchanges with a screen that with each other? Our sense of self is radically redefining itself, as we transform ourselves into an image of who we want to project online. 

  Sherry Turkle, of MIT has spent the last three decades exploring our relationship to our gadgets. We have become a society tethered to our iphones, blackberries,____________(insert your gadget here). Without them, we feel a deep loss. She describes a television producer whose Palm crashed, and she felt like it was more than she could handle. A death. “I felt as if I had lost my mind.”

   Dr. Turkle argues that technology is interfering with adolescent development, by keeping kids attached to their parents, unable to make their own decisions, and unable to move forward and develop a sense of autonomy and independence.

  Dr. Turkle also worries that we are increasingly blurring the lines between RL and virtual reality. “Sometimes we engage with avatars who anonymously stand in for others, enabling us to express ourselves in intimate ways to strangers."

The question that she leaves us with, “It hangs on the question of what we will be like, what kind of people we are becoming as we develop very intimate relationships with our machines.”

  I don’t know the answers to these questions.But the desire for deep personal connections has not disappeared. People still crave human connection. 

I may really like my iphone, but I love my husband and daughter.