Things that strike me

I’m wondering exactly how Declan Kiberd got his copy to the Irish Times today. In fact, I’m wondering why he didn’t just call a town crier to deal with the matter. Because thanks to technology, quite a lot of people got to read his piece today on how the internet can, apparently, leave you disconnected. I read it over lunch today, in a restaurant in Temple Bar. I read it because Hugh Linehan said via twitter that it was hilarious (it is) (but hardly in a positive way) and because I was on my own. If I had not been on my own, I wouldn’t have had time to read it, and that’s one person less that would have gotten to read Declan’s piece in the Irish Times today. You see, when I have dinner with friends, I might take a call if I am on work duty which occasionally happens, or I might not. But it is not technology that makes me take that call.

Blaming technology for the behaviour of people is intrinsically stupid. For most of this week I was on holiday. I happened to have dinner with friends a couple of times. I happened to have managed to have complete conversations with them uninterrupted by my mobile phone or by text message, or by twitter. Because when people are there, that’s what happens.

Concentration on a sustained conversational theme becomes impossible because of helpless availability to incoming calls.

So I have to wonder exactly who Declan Kiberd is hanging around with if this is the case in his life. It sure as hell is not the case in my life. And I have a blog, an iPhone, an iPod, an always on broadband connection and accounts on most of the social media giants. How connected am I. Dammit.

This behaviour isn’t just rude and vain. It’s also very stupid.

He doesn’t, however, say why it’s stupid which is a serious failing in an analytical piece. It leaves him open to accusations of prejudice and ignorance, for example.

Current gadgets – iPods, internet, iPhones – create only an illusion of communication.

Uhem, iPods don’t create any illusion of communication at all unless you’re at home and it’s an iPod touch. Otherwise its function is exactly the same as a gramophone player. I wonder if Declan has one; does he know the joy of classical music, of Kanye West (oh wait), of Keith Jarrett’s 1975 concert in Cologne or of audio books, and if not, is it deliberate ignorance on his part or pure laziness. iPhones, on the other hand, mean different things to different people. They are phones, first and foremost. Mostly, however, I use mine for email and twitter. Both of which allow me to communicate with people who are not beside me. I am never alone except when I leave the phone in the car or switch it off. Both of which I am in control of.

Dark glasses, once the preserve of heavy-lidded rock stars, are now worn by office workers who actually want to seem impervious and undecodable.

No they are not, at least not in my world. They are worn by people who want to sleep on aeroplanes and today, in Dublin, to protect their eyes from the sun. Again I ask, what world does Declan Kiberd inhabit?

Social network sites like Facebook seem to ratify the gloriously multiple self of the owner, while really putting pressure on participants to show themselves with endless friends, knowledge, drinks, parties. That may help some to socialise.

In a way, I have to wonder how this is different to that common activity in Ireland, getting hammered drunk on a Friday and Saturday night, and also, is Declan aware that FaceBook, again, is a non-compulsory activity. As it happens, while I have a FaceBook account, I couldn’t care less about FaceBook because most of my interaction is via twitter and a couple of other specialist message boards and sites like Flickr, Pix.ie and Ravelry. Ravelry has been world changing for a lot of people with fibre art related hobbies (I hate that term but it’s useful for collectivising knitting, crochet, felting and tatting, for example). It provides access to creativity and expertise on a world wide scale. My last piece of crochet work, for example, required the assistance of the designer, which I got, via the internet.

No longer does your private life begin in the next parish. It never starts at all.

Where I grew up, it began and ended in the smallminded petty gossip of the neighbours and the judgmental criticism offered by the Church in Ireland.

Doubtless, at the foot of this column, you’ll be told you can “have your say” online. However, you won’t have to supply a name and address, as those honest people who write letters to the editor have to do.

Well you have to actually create an account with the Irish Times if you want to issue a comment on their site and I believe that involves some contact via email, which of course is the bane of all normal people’s lives, but then, if you’re me, you’ll have a blog where you can respond to some minor points in the piece.

As yet, alas, the new technologies have produced no new art forms. Mostly, it’s been a matter of bullying, beheadings and bad, bad vibes. Masked and anonymous ranters use the media to vent. Others employ it to steal the copyright of lovely songs and beautiful texts.

If you’re going to concentrate on all that’s bad in a form of technology that is fine. It is, however, an ignorant position to take. Via a communications tool, new orchestras have been built, new collective art has come about. I have had access to photography and crochet on a level that I would never have even been able to imagine were it not for the internet and social based sites. I have access to music that has never been played on Irish radio.

For me, the internet creates connections. It connects me to kite photographers in North Carolina and New Zealand. To crochet designers in New York. To jewellery designers in the UK. The practical limitations placed on my life by living on a small, occasionally petty minded, island off the coast of mainland Europe are swept away by the internet, my phone. I think this freedom terrifies a country where the elite fear the loss of control of hearts and minds. Is Declan Kiberd important at all in a world where he has to compete on a world scale for attention? I think not.

And I think he, and people like him, fear this reality. The reality where I can go out and get access to things that collectively, this island nation has not necessarily wanted to make available, be it in simple tradable goods or ideas.

Declan Kiberd’s view is not unlike that of the Church in Ireland today. Society is moving on. It is changing. It always does. You cannot stem this tide. You can only convince yourself it is all for the worst, but the biggest impact it will have is on the control of people’s thoughts.

Most people who know anything at all about social media know that there’s a certain amount you can control and a certain amount you can’t. And that the issue of privacy has little to do with technology and everything to do with people’s attitudes. In some ways, the FaceBook photographs that he moans about, are little different to the whisperings about how 16 year old girls are slags because they kissed some boy or other. The problems are rooted in human beings, not technology.