“I think the sheep look really great,” she said. I stared perplexed at the array of little sheep frozen on a purple background. I had taken a leap and finally gotten myself a Twitter account, and decided I could no longer shy away from our world’s most infamous stream of consciousness. Like the bubbles rising to the surface of a fizzy soda before the cap comes off, I watched as dozens of tweets exploded onto my screen. I ‘Tumble,’ ‘Tweet,’ ‘Facebook,’ and ‘Google hangout.’ I ‘e-mail,’ ‘IM,’ and ‘text.’ Over many years, particularly the last decade, we have grown to live with an unsettling, unconscious suspicion borne from bombardment of knowledge. It may not manifest itself in ways we can express, but it remains in darting eyes and scattered thoughts. In an age where technology has dominated how we perceive the world and our place in it, information has evolved into a commodity: a coveted prize which whole armies would charge to find or sometimes mindless nonsense that manages to circulate through the lives of thousands. Ironically, while technology and information sharing may have become much more widespread, our attitudes toward them have remained staunchly the same, in theory if not in practice. Our relationships, history, interests, hobbies, learning and futures have been catapulted into a vortex of numbers, letters and symbols.
When exploring the confusion of information sharing and Internet innovation, minds wander to the sunny pastures of the Silicon Valley. A place where the air pulses with electricity and new programs and software are generated with as much consistency and frequency as Starbucks coffees distributed to students on a Monday morning. A far, barely audible cry from Bletchley Park, a quaint property in Milton Keynes, England. The antithesis of computing advancement, it remains run-down, forgotten and antiquated. A sorry sight, the ruins of a legacy on the brink of fading into obscurity. However, rejuvenation has come in the shape of Google. Bletchley Park cemented its place in history as the site where covert code breakers worked tirelessly to decode German messages during the Second World War. Historians and experts have even gone as far as to declare that the war was shortened by two years due to infiltration of German commands. Nevertheless, Bletchley Park’s computational legacy does not end with the war. Alan Turing, infamous for his breakthroughs in cracking codes developed his Colossus and Bombe computers, the former destroyed by Winston Churchill, and progress was swept under the rug. You would assume such a prestigious site would warrant preservation or recognition by the British authorities. Instead, it has taken a search engine giant to instigate talks of resurrection. Perhaps a hidden gem like Bletchley Park is demonstrative of Britain’s negligence in pushing for invention. The dream is to resurrect a hub of technological exploration centered around its formerly unknown birthplace.
Of course, as sharing ideas and messages become more common, its concealment becomes more challenging. Confidentiality is threatened by opening the floodgates to convenient transfer of information in some fairly bizarre ways. In Connecticut, a judge was delivering a verdict on a divorce. One assumes standard procedure ensued: vicious fights over property, friends, and random memorabilia neither party really cared for. In addition to these arbitrary logistics, the judge ruled former man and wife’s attorneys had to swap their clients’ Facebook and dating website passwords. Thereby granting access to social networking sites with an aim of finding evidence to support a nasty divorce case. This may set an alarming precedent for how the justice system will approach the Internet as an incriminating tool.
I watch multiple tickers relentlessly process hundreds of posts and pictures, brief blips indicating moments in people’s lives and moments in history. News breaks about the United States intending to heighten its military presence in Australia, indicating the potential for a surprising shift in America’s security priorities. Seamless graphics facilitate headlines fading up the screen. A gunman shot a window of the White House. My mind effortlessly dances around anecdotes from corners of the world thousands of miles from my fairy-lit dorm room. A young man, Charles Petraske, possessed the physical and mental stamina to complete the New York City marathon in a formidable three hours, but subsequently had to spend two days looking for his car because he forgot where he parked. A rare instance when information channels fail to serve their purpose. Nonetheless, GPS systems aren’t the only items failing to work effectively. Details have emerged that Larry, the cat from 10 Downing Street, has been slacking on his ‘mouse watch’ duties. A mouse intruded on a dinner engagement hosted by Prime Minister David Cameron. Cameron greeted the surprise guest with a projectile fork from his table. In the feline’s defense, a government spokesman proclaimed Larry had exhibited “a very strong predatory drive”. Incredibly reassuring to note that participants in the British political process are so concerned about the performance of a cat. The Prime Minister’s spokesman supplemented with “Larry brings a lot of pleasure to a lot of people”. Clearly the age of information overload has taken its toll on some.
Sofiya Mahdi is a sophomore in the College of Arts & Sciences and a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. She can be reached at sofiya21@bu.edu.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
