Image Source: Turchin Love and Light.
I have not set up Facebook, Youtube, or Google Plus connections for this blog, but lo and behold, the Internet has auto-generated one for me. You can visit the HISTORIES OF THINGS TO COME Youtube channel, courtesy of anonymous computer algorithms and cryptic Youtube-Google interfaces, here. The channel contains all the Youtube videos I have discussed in various posts. While convenient, it proves my comment (here) that you do not know how the Web is busy zombifying your identity and content while you are not watching.
In a similar manner, bloggers and social media enthusiasts since 2009 have had an automatically-generated online Klout ranking, which is becoming a factor in employment hiring decisions (Hat tip: JenX67). But would Klout-hungry employers hire me - or my online zombie avatar?
Like identical twins who trade off on each other's classes at school or on dates, it would be nice to send a Klout-points-garnering zombie avatar in to work to sit through the 9-to-5, while its originator stays home to write novels. But then, of course, the avatar would insidiously take over. Maybe it already has! We need David Cronenberg to film EXistenZ, part 2.
ADDENDUM (2015): The Youtube auto-channel for this blog disappeared as mysteriously as it appeared.
The internet: It'll make you famous....whether you want to be or not.
ReplyDeleteNot only will it make you famous but it is *how* it makes you famous that is a point of concern!
ReplyDeleteDo you remember when Laurie Anderson became the new host of "Alive From Off Center"? It was a TV series created by PBS as an outlet for video shorts attempting unconventional story telling. (The title was a poke at PBS' own opera series, "Live From Lincoln Center".)
ReplyDeleteAnderson would create a brief original intro for each episode, including one that introduced an experimental clone of herself to accommodate the increased workload due to her hosting duties. The clone was imperfect, being male and a dwarf but also with a slightly diminished mental capacity. He, in turn, creates a clone to help him and it is revealed to be a female giant who can barely form sentences. Both clones are distorted video images of Anderson in costume.
(For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, the clip introducing the dwarf is on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moFrJ28bXJw )
The prospect of any of my blogs generating different permutations of themselves, however involuntarily or unconsciously, should be more surprising than it is. I got a glimpse of this when I first learned that Google can robotically translate blogs of numerous other languages into English so that I could read them and it made me wonder: how is my frequently idiomatic speech translated into each of their languages? This is especially disconcerting considering how many times I have turned to the dictionary to correct my spelling of a word flagged by Google's spell check only to find that I had spelled the word correctly after all. How does this same system then propose to translate what it doesn't recognize to be a word? I can't imagine what they do to my puns let alone anyone's newly coined terms. Thus, we have all had defective clones stumbling around for a while now. If we are a world of people who will dress our cats in silly costumes are we really going to begrudge our anthropomorphicized RUR's a creative outlet side project? The next question is, if we have no practical means of determining who (or what) we're talking to, how long will it be until we cease to care?
I didn't know about the Laurie Anderson's video clone. I can see people not grasping her message here, but she nailed the weirdness of media duplication.
DeleteThe same goes for translations, as you say.
I recently discovered my YouTube channel. It upset me. LOL! But, it's not as if I'm not all over the Internet, totally ruining my chances at becoming the first female president. =)
ReplyDeleteYes, as pblfsda said above, we shouldn't be surprised by this, but we are. I think it's the auto-generated part that is unnerving - no one has to do anything to create these related barnacle websites, they just come into existence.
ReplyDelete