Only Real When “Shared“
As the quasi-epitaph of doomed adventurer Christopher McCandless read, “Happiness is only real when shared.”
In the era of mobile technology and social media, it seems, we can safely substitute any number of words in place of McCandless’s happiness: relationships, for example, are only official when they are “Facebook-official.” Experiences, from graduation to vacations, require their own hashtags and stream-of-consciousness commentary to be validated by the internet; in short, reality itself is only ‘real’ when it has been shared, and in as close to real time as possible.
It is the natural extension of what first started when people began purchasing cameras for personal, amateur use. Vacations, families, lovers, events — nothing was real unless it was documented on film — or later, in digital photos.
Hiding Behind Cameras
With cameras integrated into compact, mobile phones, it became easier than ever to quickly snap photos and video on the go — so much so that musicians and performers have begun posting requests (more like pleas) for attendees to just experience the show, rather than clinging to their phones and recording it.
The necessity of cameras to not just commemorate but validate experiences, identities, and reality itself has become so ingrained that it is not uncommon for us to experiences things through the camera, rather than allowing the camera to capture part of an experience. Documentation comes first; the experience, second (if indeed at all).
Social Images
But with cameras and internet-ready mobile devices seemingly married for life, the longstanding habits of photography have moved online, augmented and enriched by the power of social media. Instead of endless trunks full of photo albums and film (that no one wants to see), profiles and blogs are splattered with all the shaky recordings and hastily snapped pics they can hold — without respect to any demand for such content.
This jumbled mass of images, video, and words is serving largely the same purpose as the old photographs did; instead of merely hiding behind cameras, we are tethered to our devices, frantically outputting as much life-affirming content as possible.
See and Be Seen
Checking in a social media apps is now just as important as snapping a selfie and pinning it to the location where it was taken. Social media, and the content it enables, has bridged the gap between the old, camera-centered method of actualization, with the emerging, data-centered means.
Recording reality and ourselves has become an obsession — and a valuable one, as the data scientists monitoring this stream of volunteered insight can attest. This integration of mobile devices, cloud storage, and big data enables not just individuals, but companies to record, measure, document, and then review all manner of data.
And it looks like both parties are interested in participating in, adding to, and learning from, this massive digital record.
Enter the Machine
From using wearable tech to validate exercise (which provides more instant gratification and tangible data than the slow, cumulative health effects that are supposedly the underlying reward for such activity), to using social apps to monitor taste in music and movies, accomplishments in school and games, or romantic viability, we have data on everything — and we broadcast it.
The cumulative body of data documenting ourselves is what is known as the Quantified Self; we are, in effect, the sum of the data we create, leave behind, or extract from our lives. To be significant, it has to be measured, recorded, and shared online. To matter, you have to participate. But by no means are you expected to engage all this data, or make sense of it.
Record to Ignore
Amateur photography and the explosion in demand for vacation photos and home videos meant that, regardless of the quality or uniqueness of the photo record, the ability to take pictures made it obligatory to try. And, just as the bulk of personal photos (exponentially grown by the power of digital cameras to make, and store, more photos in binary) go unlooked-at, unutilized, and generally forgotten except as an obligatory element of validating an experience, so the overwhelming mass of data being produced and stored as part of the Quantified Self movement lies useless, meaningless, unanalyzed for significance or purpose.
Social media drove a conversation about oversharing, or when too much information was being broadcast simply because it was possible — and all the narcissist tendencies it encouraged, unleashed, or otherwise instilled in us. The Quantified Self is not even so much about broadcasting, as it is about simply recording. Data, data, data — it isn’t making us smarter; if anything, it is making it harder for us to determine what is knowledge, and what is noise: all data is treated equally if it can be obtained at all.
Socrates famously implored that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Today, it seems we will settle for a well-documented life, and leave the examination to the machines.
