Issues in contemporary art & my issues with contemporary art

I'm growing up in the technological wonder years. I am to believe the most exiting and innovative changes in technology are happening around me and and that I should be somehow grateful for this.

The attributes that we as a people have developed over thousands of years such as conversational skills, literature and the ability to think for ourselves have been lost, compressed into an application that groups us along with the 500 million other people on Facebook. As Paul Moore said “ If it’s not on Facebook, it didn't happen”. People feel the need to share every detail of their lives on this social median platform thus resulting in walls upon walls of dinners, cats and drunken photographs of teenagers. I don’t know if the intention of this website was to keep me in the know about who is on a night out and where at any given time but I still find myself scrolling through and continuing not to care.

“Liking” a Facebook page allows the world to know your favourite activities and places so that businesses can closely survey their customers. (Or serial killers to conveniently locate victims) This raises the question how differently people behave online. Would you stand at your front door and announce your plans for the evening or arrive in front of people to show them your caramel latte if not for instagram?

Many of us know Facebook isn't free, nothing of the sort is. We are targeted by online advertising based on what we have liked, shared or said on Facebook. Our information is sold on to companies and their is of coarse the suspicion that Facebook scans our private messaging for buzzwords to do this. Only a year ago I was using Facebook to “Privately” message a friend about distortion pedals to find adverts on my facebook and in my E-mail from guitar pedal stores, conveniently placed in front of me. The information we share privately and publicly on face book is invaluable to the online shopping industry.

A slightly more Orwellian example is the new Facebook news headline feature that appears on the side of the website with the days news. Of coarse if their are to be any negative headlines about Zukerburg’s corporation they will not appear on the side of the website. In fact no word over the controversy surrounding apple in relation to a dreadful Iphone six, forcing an awful U2 album on customers or the Icloud being hacked, appeared in these news updates. Leading me to believe that a bias exists and that the news can be bought if someone rich enough decides what headlines teenagers will or won’t see because god knows they wont turn on Aljazeera to find out.

I only see the problem getting worse. I can feel the technological noose tightening around the throats of my generation as the Google Glass has somehow made it on to the heads of a handful of people. What kind of idiot would be exited about google getting attached to your head and having visual access to your everyday experience? What is stopping them from snapping pictures of the food you eat everyday, the brands you wear and even the type of women you tend to look at in order to pin point you as a consumer, sell these details and have you buying things because they appear to be made for you!

I for one look forward to fighting off google glass headed zombies at axe-point during the robotic uprising.

-Oisín.