I Internets, Therefore I Am
Having the internet as a big part of me is scary. It’s scary because I’ve let so much of my life be transformed by it. I don’t know how I got here, but I admit that using it has influenced me to stop watching TV, switch jobs the last few times, change the way I socialize with people, improve my domestic skills, and got me and my wife to pack our bags and move to England.
Also, it’s scary how so much of the future is going to arrive at my doorstep tomorrow. Maybe this is a curse of being a technologist, and one devoted to saving the world through it. It makes me wonder what kind of person I would have turned out to be if I read newspapers everyday, stuck with popular advice, and gone for an RM100k-a-year neck-and-tie job that would’ve made my life more cushy, if we had decided to remain in Malaysia.
It’s also scary how much I believe from the things I read.
I remember stumbling upon Penelope Trunk’s posts and being so inspired by it. Maybe because at the time, I was really feeling depressed at work, and longing for something a lot bigger than myself. That was what got me started with this blog. Somehow I had this impression that work-life in Malaysia seemed a lot worse than it seems, and I actually went around telling people to believe that and that it’s possible to achieve their dreams.
And thinking back, I don’t know if I was right. But I believed it and I still do now… but the point is, it wouldn’t have happened if I had not been living off the internet like some crazed hobo.
Is the World Really Changing?
My wife is fairly net-moderate. She’s literate, but she doesn’t feel she needs to check her Flickr or Facebook page every so often, like I do. Her inbox is filled with emails she hasn’t opened for days, weeks, sometimes months. Her job does require her to administer a Drupal site for the charity she’s working for, but it’s just a job. She’s dabbled with GIMP but that’s because it’s free and I told her to give it a try. The only thing she really relies on the internet for is streaming japanese dramas and mangas from fansub sites. If the internets died tomorrow and cellphones didn’t work, she wouldn’t give a hoot, except for maybe the lack of mangas.
On the other hand, I hang out with people who send twitter posts everytime they enter a pub. A core group of us coursemates organize events purely by @replies, it makes email look obsolete. I open up Gmail, and I get a Facebook notification from a friend who’s coming to visit the UK, and then another, and another, over a span of a week or so. No one asks for directions anymore, because it sounds silly if you don’t know how to use Google Maps. I am assimilating deeper and faster into an industry that lives and breathes technology, and will not sleep until all of creation’s problems are solved by it.
The contrasting realities are two perspectives I find hard to bring together, partly because they’re both a big part of my life.
I sometimes feel it’s like that out there in the world, too. That there’s a gap that’s moving in all sorts of directions and it’s hard to make sense where we’re going to end up tomorrow.
Being Net-Literate Doesn’t Necessarily Make You Better
I made an assumption in the past that you need powerful analytical skills and the ability to make sense of large amounts of information to survive in today’s info-rich world. Yet, I still find people who live in complete silos and have a worldview about as big as a small island. And they get by fine.
I also realized that people will gladly trade their resources for the so-called info-skilled people to do the dirty work, and just focus on managing them. This includes CEOs, managers, politicians, leaders, etc.
My dad, for example, has been running a few businesses for the last few years. I admire his reputation and his keen nose for a deal. He used to fumble so much with technology, but he’s getting better at it. By no means does it dictate the way he runs his life. He has ways of getting around that but I know it’s not about outsmarting technology.
I realize more and more that there are people out there who are successful and don’t need all that techie stuff to get there. They’re made from different kind of stuff, and it’s something I’ve only recently come to appreciate.
So now I’m not sure who’s smarter – the folks who skill themselves in technology to get ahead in life, or the folks who skill themselves in life to get ahead in a technology-driven world.
I know big things are coming ahead we’ve barely dreamed of, and I’ll probably be excited when it comes, but I can’t help but feel that I ended up the short end of a stick.
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My husband told me that I should try to get into his world – the world wide web, as much as I try to force mine on to him. It made me think about my parents who have different interests in life, or rather, both live in different worlds and meet each other ever so often on the moon.
I think people who are successful now, were built on something that was in the past, perhaps when internet was not so important. Those who will be successful tomorrow, would technology be vital? It’s hard to say but I remembered reading a book that it’s best to focus on one’s strength. So if you live best in the internet, succeed there.