Thursday, April 16, 2009

Earlier today I was discussing the Internet with Boo Bear–because deliberating about the Information Superhighway is what I do in the morning–and there were startling realizations. The wheel wasn’t reinvented, mind you, but there was insight into online burnout and why it happens. She was experiencing a general ennui bordering on light revulsion for Blogger, Facebook, the works.

I couldn’t imagine anyone finding Facebook revolting, so first I confirmed it wasn’t the hormones talking. Then, the theory: online burnout occurs when you constantly give with little in the way of offline return. Let’s break this down. On one end of the spectrum, you’ve got something like Hulu or YouTube, where you’re not giving at all. You’re in full consumption mode. Somewhere near the middle of the spectrum is online shopping, which sees you offering time and money for better prices, free shipping, and an actual product. It’s roughly breakeven. Way on the other end are the social conceits: your posts, your Tweets, your networks.

Here, there’s a real opportunity to expend effort tirelessly, ravenously so, and have all your sweat and tears fall into the void. Say you pound out a dozen blog posts, tweet all day about what you ate, add a dozen connections on LinkedIn, and friend your 8th grade algebra teacher on Facebook. All for what? What precisely happens in the real world? Likely nothing, which may explain why a phenomenon like this happens. Publish a blog post and you get to write another one. Up your friend count by one and you can up it by two. When a rat pushes a button, it expects food or a shock, not another five buttons to appear.

Certainly there’s the benefit of keeping in touch with people. But before the Internet, before phones became untethered conduits to the Internet, people were still able to maintain contact. There was mail. Wired telephones. Radio. Carrier pigeons. Telegram. Smoke signals! And you wonder whether people were any less satisfied without the ability to text, then whip out the Blackberry 20 minutes later, then Tweet, and then Skype and webcam later in the evening.

Call me a Luddite, but also label me a moderate. I don’t blow things up, for one thing, and I also like certain technologies, namely modern plumbing and air conditioning. If I were able to travel back to the late 19th century with these two things, I’d be golden. How to make a time machine without the aid of technology, though? I guess I’d pedal backwards on a bicycle, maybe attach a clock that ticks in reverse to the handlebars, kind of like an Amish flux capacitor.