On the internet and superegoes

Now that we're about to have another addition to our family, I look back to this tribute http://internetjaywalking.blogspot.com/2008/09/her-name-was-katherine.html that I wrote about a member of the family we lost a decade and a half ago. It's possibly the only detailed record of her life anywhere on the internet

They say that the internet has given birth to superegos, a generation of regular people who think too highly of their own importance. In a way that's true. I think we have statistics to prove this. The internet has given more power to the individual in a way that no other medium ever has. It is the ultimate "democratizer" where the loudness of your voice isn't always proportional to the amount of money in your wallet, the number of celebrities that you know or which cabinet positions your parents or uncles hold. If you have something to say and people wanna hear it, they will find you.

The internet also has become a record keeper of sorts, a place where you leave your, more or less, permanent imprint wittingly or unwittingly. In the words of someone who now lives his life as an internet demotivator : “don’t be an internet meme cos you’ll live on forever in a way that you probably don’t want to.”

The footprint in life that one leaves behind is so much bigger now. Anyone who passes away now, leaves a facebook profile, possibly a blog, an online photography album, a resume of accomplishments, a compilation of poems, photos, personal musings of various depth which anyone from the present or from the future would be able to find by googling his or her name

In contrast, anyone who passed away before internet became mainstream, unless they became popular for some reason or they made a significant contribution to a certain group, left very little to no trace outside the photoalbums and memories of their immediate friends and family. Google their names and it’s almost as if they never existed. 

The internet is a place where one's popularity is not commensurate to the availability of public information on him/her. A public filing system that makes sure that each individual can be picked from from a sea of nameless faces, put under the magnifying glass and be appreciated (or scorned?) as individuals. Under the magnifying glass of the internet, each individual has a voice which can be heard and that voice doesn’t have to die with him. If that does make him feel more important than his pre-internet counterparts, I can’t say that I blame him.

Kathy... you’ll find her on the internet, if you search hard enough.