Internet as a nervous system: the IoT and our place in it
When I first heard of the ‘World Wide Web’ back in high school, I wasn’t all that impressed nor concerned. I was too busy watching cat videos, reading japanese manga, downloading movies and music on Limewire (RIP), and using MSN messenger. I made use of it, but barely paid attention it. It’s hard to believe the new buzzwod that stands in for WWW is the much more tangible IOT — the Internet of Things.
When I first heard of IOT, it was like seeing imaginary tendrils of energy zooming across my screen and out into the world. The telephone and power lines I passed on the street were no longer hunks of wood and wires, they were the reason my internet was either working fast or slow, whether I was able to watch a video in high res or not, as well as how quickly I could send pictures to friends either across town or across the world.
The rise of internet use over the past decade has happened in parrallel with the rise of connectivity between devices. At the moment, 46% of the world has internet access, and that number is slowly rising. The move of network providers and phone manufacturers from 3G to 4G has made internet transmission faster, and the depth of communication wider. Smartphones are now capable of doing more than just calling and sending messages: using Whatsapp, Messenger or Gmail to send pdfs, memes, gifs, docs and letters for work as well as to loved ones, as well as reading pdfs, watching videos, and conducting video calls, has turend smartphones into versatile and compact personal computers. The design and software within them, has become a vital aspect for consumers to decide which smartphone to purchase, based on the data use they prefer to have.
And I mention data use because to better grasp an increasingly imporant buzz word, ‘big data’, it will be good to look at some numbers. With figures from 2016, there were: 500 million tweets, 4 million hours of content uploaded onto Youtube, 3.6 billion likes on Instagram, 4.3 billion facebook messages posted, 5.75 billion Facebook likes, and 6 billion daily Google searches. Now that’s big numbers, and a lot of data to match. These numbers show not only a great amount of information, but also a great amount of interaction. ‘Share’, ‘like’, and ‘comment’ have become a commonplace triad in every major social media app as well as online publication site, demonstrating how interaction metrics have become the benchmark for companies to understand how, why and with whom, individuals share data.
The analogy I wish to make is that connectivity and interaction of data across the internet, is much like the connectivity and interaction of data across our nervous system. The internet itself is like the central nervous system(CNS), with a distributed and server based brain, and a spinal cord TCP/IP protocol network sending prompts to and from itself. Our devices are components of the peripheral nervous system(PNS) which relay information to and from the internet: by delivering websites, apps, widgets and messages via internet access, to giving us status updates about new apps or software available for downloading.
And it is the analogy between our devices and the PNS that is most striking. The PNS consists of the somatic nervous system, which regulates voluntary movement, and the autonomic nervous system, which regulates involutary movement. Our devices act as stimuli to our nervous system, and as such make us act in certain ways. We are all victim of wanting to take a selfie just so we can get likes on our Instagram to fuel our self esteem or to show off our progress at the gym. Or all want to share a meme as soon as we find it funny so that we can have something to talk about when we catch up with our friends. Or worry and sweat over the feedback you might get from an article you just submitted on Medium or Facebook especially when you know it might be a controversial topic.
The actions we commit or fear to commit to with our devices, cause reactions in our brain and body as though the devices were connected to our actual PNS. And because of this, bullying, hate-speech and racism in comments sections on Facebook posts or YouTube videos or in gaming forums and online game chat rooms, have become ethical problems. Hiding behind anonymous profile pictures, trolls are able to make individuals sick as well as depressed, due to the connection between our self image and our virtual image, as well as our vulnerability given how easy it is to be contacted and critised when online.
With the rise of the internet and the IOT, it is easy to see that the devices in our homes, cars and offices, have indeed become extensions of our own nervous system. Just as a stress hormone from your brain initiates feedback in lowering your joy or causing gut problems when prolonged, getting a negative comment on a video or article can cause similar damage. Just as a release of dompamine can have you dancing for joy, a good number of likes and shares of your selfie or uploaded vlog can lead to a similar celebration. This is not to demean these reactions or call out our tethered relationships to our devices. Quite the opposite. Because we have become so connected to our devices and the data we make use of, as well as the individuals who we interact with, we need to become more aware of the effects these relationships are having on us.
And this awareness becomes more apparent when the scale of use becomes recongnised. The numbes that accumulate to produce ‘big data’ I mentioned are numbers made possible by people like you, your friends, your family, and me. We are all part of this electrochemical nervous system, that spreads from our brains to our fingertips, and extends into the ephemeral World Wide Web.
The Internet of Things has not only transformed communication, it has transformed our very physiological responses. That being the case, we must be aware of how these signals and responses become activated, so that we can take note of when the relationship to the IoT is becoming harmful to our self-esteem and self-image, as well as where this relationship can be strenghtened and made more democratised.
