the internet

BY NICK CARLO

The Internet is still a rather recent invention, whose effects on the psyche of our society, and the individual, we are still only beginning to understand. The network of servers connected by various forms of optic cables, while under development by various government and military organizations throughout the later half of the 20th century, really only had its debut on the stage of mass public consciousness in the late 1990’s. Prior to that time, while home computers were becoming increasingly more common, communication within a network was not. The late 90’s, with the Dot Com Boom and Bust, saw the internet and its possibilities first projected into the public spotlight. Since that time, hardware has only become more powerful, compact, and efficient, and computer languages and programs have become increasingly nuanced and developed. As we rushed off into the great unknown of progress and potentiality we perhaps neglected to consider how our adventure would change us.

Marshall McLuhan, popularized in the 1960’s, among many other things, a concept that is still referenced today: “The medium is the message.” In short, this assertion proclaims that the effect on the psyche produced by a medium, or method, of communication vastly overwhelms the effect of the content, or information, received from that particular medium. Additionally, he proclaimed this messaging that the medium performs on us is almost entirely imperceptible to the user. He spoke and wrote prolifically about the social and individual effects of interacting with various forms of media, whether TV, movies, music, books, or advertisements. If it really is messaging us, it may be instructive to consider the vein of effects produced by the very experience of the Internet on our social and individual psyche, regardless of what websites we use.

It then comes down to determining what exactly characterizes the internet experience, apart from the experiences conduited by other media. In these early days of this Age of the Transistor, most of our interaction with the internet has itself been experienced through the medium of the Screen. (Though even this connection is being broken as the internet moves into the world of screenless things like smart speakers). What effects does the screen have on the individual? It is becoming increasingly common knowledge the frequencies of light produced by modern screens have the ability to interrupt the rhythms of our natural Circadian Cycle. Additionally, the Screen is different from, say, the Book, in that its contents now have no physicality or weight, from the perspective of the user (clearly, servers do exist and have weight, though the user does not interact tangibly with them). What effects does this incorpore-

ality of content have on the psyche? Who knows? Maybe, it influences our brain to expect a certain mutability or control over other phenomena. However, we can say that this aspect is an essential characteristic of the Screen experience that informs the subconscious experience we have with the Internet and perhaps even the expectations we have on other aspects of life.

However, the Internet Experience is not completely defined by the Screen Experience. The Internet carries with it an entire set of mental assumptions that color our Internet Experience. We assume a few things about the Internet almost tacitly: it is “always on,” always accessible, independent of location or time; it is a “place” where one may share and experience the ideas and thoughts of others; it is a place of perpetually untapped potential, a world of wonder where no one knows what may be discovered next. These characteristics make it particularly enticing, with a fairly low energy requirement to use. Its omnipresence is comforting, we can feel less alone, as there is a whole world of voices in our pocket. (One wonders if it is fulfilling an archetypal role of Protective Mother or Father in the mass psyche.) It is a place one may go, whenever one chooses, for information, answers, community, or entertainment.

The Internet Experience, then turns out to be incredibly stimulating, so much so that we can experience a decent amount of stimulus without very much energy inserted. This forms a decent contrast to the Stimulation Paradigm of the previous era. In a time when the worlds’ catalogue of all media was more than a thumb swipe away, stimulating entertainment was harder to come by. This often demanded a higher energy insertion of the individual into an experience for it to be

satisfying. For instance, take the disco of the 1970’s and 80s: a comparatively energy expensive entertainment, by today’s standards. Dressing up in a classy, zany, or unique way, leaving the house, dancing and singing all night, is much more of an investment compared to a night in front of a screen. Thus one may imagine, through habitual Internet Experience, due to brain plasticity, we begin to expect a certain level of stimulation at a cost of a certain amount of energy expenditure. This may lead us to abandon certain habits and activities, that while at one time, engaging, now “not worth the effort.”

This is not to say that the Internet only stifles creativity; on the contrary, it can inspire, however this inspiration is generally a product of Internet content, rather than the medium itself, which is inherently enervating. For the most part, the internet is a consumer’s world, allowing vastly more opportunities to consume, than produce. And thus consume we do.

Everybody consumes their own niche of the internet, their own specific set of web domains, their online fingerprint. This forms a decent contrast to a pre-internet world, where physical location had more of a correlation with world view. However, as the very nature of the Internet Experience is alocational, and now one may cultivate a world view completely independently of everyone else. This seems to have had an effect of creating a community intellectually isolated from their physical neighbors while making intellectual neighbors out of people never met or seen across the world. This in turn does have a Shrinking Effect on our notion of physical distance. When pictures of distant lands may be experienced and travel there acquired from a few clicks, how far is far, really? We’ve seen it, the world is on a microscope slide.

And yet, it is just all imagined. The world is still just as big as it ever was, just the feeling of closeness has increased. Everyone we meet online is even more an aspect of our own psyche, even more so than the people we meet in the waking world. We provide the voices to texts and comments. We fit our conception of popular figures into a particular archetypal location, regardless of that human’s true nature or personality. The image is cultivated. We cultivate an image of ourselves as well. Our online persona is more of an idealized projection than a reflection of the self. Why do we do this? The internet is a perfect place for comparing oneself with another. This inevitably leads to judgement of the self, or of the other. Observation and Critique from and towards so many perspectives, is, for the individual, at such unprecedented levels, that our genetic and physiological memory has little data on how to deal with it healthily.

So where does this leave us with our creation? All in all, at the very least, it seems that the Internet Experience is a bit of a metaphysical (or mental) home world that we curate for ourselves. The creation of which carries with it deepseated, emotional, physiological, and social effects, always flowing just beneath the surface of conscious awareness. The internet seems to show no signs of slowing its growth and encroachment into even more areas of public and private life. We will not know all of the effects of such integration until the dust has settled and we can see what has changed, if we can remember. C

America Online sign on screen from 1997