Read Online The End of Absence: Reclaiming What We've Lost in a World of Constant Connection by Michael Harris - Free Book Online
Authors: Michael Harris
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in a world altogether outside the world of my own material life.
Solitude may cause discomfort, but that discomfort is often a healthy and inspiring sort. It’s only in moments of absence that a daydreaming person like Anthony Trollope can receive truly unexpected notions. What will become of all those surreptitious gifts when our blank spaces are filled in with duties to “social networks” and the relentless demands of our tech addictions?
I fear we are the last of the daydreamers. I fear our children will lose lack, lose absence, and never comprehend its quiet, immeasurable value. If the next generation socializes more online than in the so-called real world, and if they have no memory of a time when the reverse was true, it follows that my peers and I are the last to feel the static surrounding online socialization. The Internet becomes “the real world” and our physical reality becomes the thing that needs to be defined and set aside—“my analog life,” “my snail life,” “my empty life.”
Montaigne once wrote, “ We must reserve a back shop , all our own, entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.” But where will tomorrow’s children set up such a shop, when the world seems to conspire against the absentee soul?
CHAPTER 3
Confession
The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.
—Søren Kierkegaard
THE third most Googled person in 2012 was a small fifteen-year-old girl from Port Coquitlam—a nondescript Canadian town composed mainly of box stores, parking lots, and teenagers with nothing to do. The girl’s name was Amanda Todd . She liked cheerleading—being petite, she got to be the girl at the top of the pyramid. And she liked to sing—she would perform covers before her computer’s camera and post the videos on YouTube under an account titled SomeoneToKnow. In these, her adolescent pursuits, she was entirely typical. But when Amanda Todd killed herself on Wednesday, October 10, a different light was cast on her seemingly ordinary life; within days, media alighted on the most notorious cyberbullying case in history.
I will not fill these pages with a detailed account of the years of abuse that led up to her death (that story is readily available on the Internet, which proved such an entrenched and toxic commentator on Todd). Suffice it to say that when still in grade seven, she was convinced by an unidentified man to expose her breasts via webcam. That man then proceeded to blackmail and harass her with the captured image of her nude body for years. (“Put on a show for me,” he would later order.) Todd became the subject of a tormenting Facebook profile, which featured her breasts as its profile picture. She attended three schools in the space of a year in an effort to avoid the ensuing harassment from peers. She was beaten by a gang of young girls (while others stood by and recorded the scene on their phones). And, eventually, Todd became so paranoid and anxious that she could not leave her home. She first attempted to kill herself by drinking from a bottle of bleach, which was unsuccessful and led to more of the online bullying that drove her to that action in the first place.
Then, a month before her death, Todd posted a video on her YouTube channel, unpacking her troubled story. This time she wasn’t singing someone else’s song, but describing for viewers (in a broken way, for she suffered from a language-based learning disability) her own suffering. Naturally, this opened her again to the attacks of faceless online “commenters.” By stepping into the buzzing crowds of Internet forums, we hazard a deep cruelty. While Amanda Todd lived, these waves of ridicule pushed her toward more public confessions, which were broadcast over the very mass communication technologies that had spurred her distress. Later, after her suicide, she was
Solitude may cause discomfort, but that discomfort is often a healthy and inspiring sort. It’s only in moments of absence that a daydreaming person like Anthony Trollope can receive truly unexpected notions. What will become of all those surreptitious gifts when our blank spaces are filled in with duties to “social networks” and the relentless demands of our tech addictions?
I fear we are the last of the daydreamers. I fear our children will lose lack, lose absence, and never comprehend its quiet, immeasurable value. If the next generation socializes more online than in the so-called real world, and if they have no memory of a time when the reverse was true, it follows that my peers and I are the last to feel the static surrounding online socialization. The Internet becomes “the real world” and our physical reality becomes the thing that needs to be defined and set aside—“my analog life,” “my snail life,” “my empty life.”
Montaigne once wrote, “ We must reserve a back shop , all our own, entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.” But where will tomorrow’s children set up such a shop, when the world seems to conspire against the absentee soul?
CHAPTER 3
Confession
The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.
—Søren Kierkegaard
THE third most Googled person in 2012 was a small fifteen-year-old girl from Port Coquitlam—a nondescript Canadian town composed mainly of box stores, parking lots, and teenagers with nothing to do. The girl’s name was Amanda Todd . She liked cheerleading—being petite, she got to be the girl at the top of the pyramid. And she liked to sing—she would perform covers before her computer’s camera and post the videos on YouTube under an account titled SomeoneToKnow. In these, her adolescent pursuits, she was entirely typical. But when Amanda Todd killed herself on Wednesday, October 10, a different light was cast on her seemingly ordinary life; within days, media alighted on the most notorious cyberbullying case in history.
I will not fill these pages with a detailed account of the years of abuse that led up to her death (that story is readily available on the Internet, which proved such an entrenched and toxic commentator on Todd). Suffice it to say that when still in grade seven, she was convinced by an unidentified man to expose her breasts via webcam. That man then proceeded to blackmail and harass her with the captured image of her nude body for years. (“Put on a show for me,” he would later order.) Todd became the subject of a tormenting Facebook profile, which featured her breasts as its profile picture. She attended three schools in the space of a year in an effort to avoid the ensuing harassment from peers. She was beaten by a gang of young girls (while others stood by and recorded the scene on their phones). And, eventually, Todd became so paranoid and anxious that she could not leave her home. She first attempted to kill herself by drinking from a bottle of bleach, which was unsuccessful and led to more of the online bullying that drove her to that action in the first place.
Then, a month before her death, Todd posted a video on her YouTube channel, unpacking her troubled story. This time she wasn’t singing someone else’s song, but describing for viewers (in a broken way, for she suffered from a language-based learning disability) her own suffering. Naturally, this opened her again to the attacks of faceless online “commenters.” By stepping into the buzzing crowds of Internet forums, we hazard a deep cruelty. While Amanda Todd lived, these waves of ridicule pushed her toward more public confessions, which were broadcast over the very mass communication technologies that had spurred her distress. Later, after her suicide, she was
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