In the year 1980 the highest rating toy in both sales and popularity was indicated as the

Rubiks cube. In the late 90s, when I was a child and the Internet had just a drop over 1 million
websites, we all wanted a Tamagotchi, a Care Bear, or a Furby doll. We used to play with ropes and
footballs, rocks and sticks, but we craved the new, we wanted the gadgets, we wanted the trendy
toys. Today, the top five products on consumer wish lists of all ages, genders and ethnic
backgrounds do not include toys at all, they are filled only with new technologies and devices;
smartphones, tablets, e-readers, mp3 players and headphones, in that particular order. There are
more 10 year olds walking outside with and IPhone in their hands than there are with kites, skates or
bicycles. We have become a community where social media icons are more recognizable than road
signs, we are living in a place and time where an entire generation is being raised on the internet.
And I cannot help but wonder, what will happen one day when these children, look up from their
screens and wake-up as adults, not on-line, but in the known to them RL, and to us simply as Real
Life?
We have created for ourselves an environment where symbols like a thumbs up to indicate a
Like, or a hashtag # to create a link, have been extracted from the virtual reality and are being
introduced to actual day to day verbal conversations. The word Unfriend for example, was added
to the New Oxford American Dictionary in the year 2009 as of its popularity and great importance to
every single Facebook user in existence. A world where in early February 2015, a Google search
showed 49 300 000 results for the words Social Media Infographic whilst it only showed 33 000 000
for the query Eating Disorders. A world where there are more devices connected to the Internet
than the 7 291 854 270+ inhabitants of planet Earth. All of those devices are our New Media. The
gadgets we use to access any website at any time, to stream audio and video content every day, to
send emails and chat on-line, to be part of virtual communities, to read, to play games, to plan trips,
to shop, to pay taxes, to create memories, to be part of life.
In the year 2011 the American author Chad Kultgen published a novel called Men, Women
& Children. A film with the same storyline and tittle was released in late 2014 by Paramount Pictures,
and film director Jason Reitman. To summarize, the plot revolves around the lives of a contemporary
group of teenagers, their families, the ways they deal with depression, losing their virginity, anorexia,
divorce, impotence, etc... And how the modern media and electronics have control over all of them.
It is a story which lifts the vail from the perception on technology, it shows the reality as it is, so crude
it hurts. It shows how the over use of a product kills its purpose, how it alters the perception of
reality, how it suggests new methods of approaching day to day life through un-limited sources of
information. It also shows how it slowly murders the quality of communication to a point where real
life, yet incredibly simple, remains forever unreachable. It devours the remains of our imagination
and individuality, numbing us emotionally and setting us apart from one another until we are further
concerned about strangers and the virtual unknown, than the actual well known reality and our own
loved ones. Proof enough of which should be todays trending Valentines Day cards, with which
consumers are able to state that their love for their significant others is greater than their love for their
mobile device, or the one between the two is compared leaving them on an equal level.
Making the computer into a second self, finding a soul in the machine, can substitute for human
relationships.
Sherry Turkle
The British retail research firm Columino and the American based marketing company
Affinion Group came together in late 2013 to investigate what the world of gadgets was like within
the United Kingdoms population. The research has shown that currently, British households own
gadgets worth more than 51.6 billion pounds. Through all participants in the surveys, 82% of
device users stated that they carry their smartphone wherever they go, including the toilet. When
asked if consumers would prefer losing their wallet or purse to their mobile, 79.8% answered theyd
rather lose their wallets. When asked about the same issue, only with a credit card, a watch or an
expensive piece of jewellery 62.4% opted for the card, 65.9% for the watch, and 73.4% for the
jewellery. Only when the loss of their personal device was compared to something of greater

importance and value as their car keys and their passports, could 79.5% go for the keys and 78.5%
for the passport. But what about the other 20.5 and 21.5 percent accordingly, which would still
gladly run the risk of having the outcomes and rewards of their hard work, or even worse, their
identity, their whole life, taken away in exchange of the wellbeing of a smartphone?

If all this technology is here for a greater good, for a better developed community, for
advancements in science, medicine and all communications, then how come is it becoming an
inseparable part of our physical human bodies and lives in a non-positive way? If all the information
in the world is out there for us to take it, and for anyone to have access to anything at any time, and
remain informed on any subject and any person, then how do we know what part of our information is
used to inform someone, about us? In the words of Albert Einstein A little knowledge is a dangerous
thing. So is a lot we can see reflected entirely all sides of the media we own. But who is to decide
how much knowledge exactly is too much? Who is to decide if the media in fact, has actually
claimed ownership of us? The effect it has on society, is not to be determined by the technology
itself, but through following the infinite thread of social networks and platforms which rule over the
development, funding, implementation and future growth of the media.

All substances are poisons; there is none which is not a poison. The right dose differentiates the
venom
-

Paracelsus

The desire of a universal language has led us into creating one without even realizing it. The
language of social media. With this idea of globalization, of unification, the death of distance, we are
also bringing death to confidentiality. Today, privacy is nothing but an oxymoron. In the 2013
documentary Terms and Conditions May Apply, the American film director Cullen Hoback follows
the traces of major media corporations like Facebook, Twitter, Google and many others, in trying to
clarify how exactly do they all obtain, storage and make purpose of our personal data. Long story
short, they all have a right to keep and give out every bit of information we all share with them. All of
this is of course stated in their terms and conditions, but do we really pay attention to what would
take the average person a month per year to read? Not really. In 2009, the British company
Gamestation placed in their Service Agreement, as a joke and only for a day, the following: By
placing an order via this website, you agree to grant us a non-transferable option to claim, now and
forever more, your immortal soul. Seven thousand people Agreed to their terms that day. Of
course no souls have been collected, but it makes you wonder, what else could be included in
there that we would never see?
All of the technology we purchase from Google, Macintosh and others comes pre-installed
with applications and services which in one way or another obtain and process our information. All
these little factors like Cookies, Serial Numbers, internal GPS systems and so on, which are here to
supposedly enhance our user experience, are actually just one more way to follow and track each
single one of our steps. And of course all these services are free, but are they really worth the
exchange of our freedom? The media is no longer a place to bring us together, a community thing,
which is how Mark Zuckerberg describes Facebook, it is now a growing market, a place for business
and sales where we as consumers are shown advertisements according to our personal
preferences, which they all keep a record of, and are slowly beguiled into purchasing even more of
their products. Hence, we enter here a never ending loop the more information they have about us,
the more products they know how to sell us. And for all these major corporations, anonymity, user
privacy, data confidentiality, they are worthless, because bottom line is they bring no profit.

The Wall Street Journal states that 250 billion dollars are lost by consumers each year due to
what is hidden in fine print. But what about if it was the other way around? What if the corporations
lost 250 billion a year because of us actually being entitled to our privacy? Or even worse, what if we
controlled their privacy? They would never allow that to happen. Which is why people like Julian
Assange are being prosecuted for doing nothing but showing the world a piece of the truth. Truth,
which is accessed globally through the creations of the same companies who wish to ban it. We
should ask ourselves, how did we get here? How did we fall so deep in the waters of consumerism,
that the only way to make it out, is to surrender to the mercy of the wave and hope it wont drag us to
the very bottom? In the words of John Milton The descent to hell is easy, for it is paved with good
intentions, we can interpret that if the primary thought behind this world wide web of information and
personal data, and all devices that use it, was indeed only for the profit of the fellow corporate man,
then has it ever been a purely good intention? And if not, then how come, hell is here still? How come
the rights to Religion, Speech, Press, Assembly and Petition are not respected and granted in all
countries, at all? The Devil is not as black as he is painted said Dante, and that is exactly how.
The Devil we are facing here is a different one. It is an average salesman, who has figured
out that if he places the frog into a pot of water, the amphibian will be lured into a false sense of
security, allowing the man to slowly turn up the heat until the frog has boiled alive. But blinded by his
greed, what he hasnt realized is that there is always someone who watches the watcher. And that
someone, is us. For all these products and services wouldnt be worth a thing without a user, to
actually make use of them. And even if there are indeed more networking devices than people in the
world, all of those devices are controlled by actual people. Even if the market is controlled by the
trending technologies, that is all they are a trend, because sooner or later mankind will grow tired
of the expectedly non-innovative high priced corporations, and their attempts to sell the same
product over and over, simply in a prettier package, and they will all run out of business as it has
been proven that in every culture man returns to his primal base of knowledge after every revolution.
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new
under the sun. - Ecclesiastes 1:9 We cannot build the new, without having the base of the old.
And through the globalization of our and their own data, they have already given life to the modern
worlds transformation, and long awaited revolution. They, just as us, have agreed to their own terms
and conditions and have granted us a non-transferable option to claim, now and forever more, their
immortal soul.