Off the Grid

I've decided that the only anonymous way of life in this Cyborg Age (cyber-organism age) is to unplug from the matrix, go off the grid, and most definitely avoid My Space. I have never liked MySpace (its blinking ads and a list of random "comments" from people would otherwise just email me) but somehow, like everyone else, I have an account there anyway.

There's a lot of strange pressure from the most unexpected places--your warm-market, a parent or a random uncle, for example--to have some Space to call your own in this virtual reality, MySpace. I have finally realized its purpose: to reconnect with old friends (or something like that). I have recently been re-introduced to my past in this venue by way of people finding my account. An old friend from my 6 month life in Arizona, a neighbor that I went to grade-school/high-school with, a friend from my youthful church-going days, people from my short fling in Chico.

MySpace is where all of your historic selves collide. This is unnatural (and scary), I think.

I do enjoy re-connecting with people that I've lost touch with but I have been wondering about something as a result of this new cyber-world we (virtually) live in. Is anonymity a thing of the past? Are we are all a bunch of cyborgs now--organic material suddenly (critically) connected to techno-mechanics, some of us quite literally being kept alive by the merging of these two realities--plastic hearts and metal knees, a lonely person finding community on-line when s/he can't find one off of it?

Scholar Donna Haraway coined the term “cyborg” wondering at the ethics of who gets left out of this rapid techo-human merge (a new power). More concerning, she wonders at the apparent dis-location of cyber-space-travelers from their otherwise physical locations: gender, race, sexuality, et al. Can anyone access the power of virtual reality when they travel through space as a dis-embodied being (power they may not otherwise immediately have because they are black or female, for example). Haraway's concern (as I understand it, and I probably don't) is that not all is equal (as it appears to be) in cyborg-ville. For example, how do we reconcile the fact that the “West” is more rapidly excelling in this new-found technology, all the while globalizing itself, spreading its culture everywhere else. As Haraway puts it, the “West's escalating dominations of abstract individuation, an ultimate self untied at last from all dependency, a man in space.” (If that doesn’t make sense it’s because Haraway is a cryptic, theory-slut [as all post-modern scholars are].)

Anyway, what I’m really trying to say is this: it’s good to hear from old friends, I still hate MySpace, and I think eventually we should all (when we can stop compulsively checking our email) unplug from the System, go off the Grid, and take a break from our new found dependence. Or maybe this is the hippie child in me speaking, a child that was forced to plant, weed, and water a massive vegetable garden every Saturday of her childhood instead of watching TV. Maybe I don't rightly appreciate the value of an alternative reality.

I don't know.

But I have a feeling that one day, without warning, I'll just unplug from the system and no one will be able to find me unless they have my physical address written down somewhere. Please know that in this case, I would welcome any and all who would like to stop by for some tea and garden vegetables. As my MySpace account says: "Who would I like to meet? People standing right in front of me... and Matt Damon, of course."

Don't worry, I'll wait a few years before I go completely off the Grid.

(But you might want to get out a pen an paper and write down my physical address before then. That is, unless we have never met but you read my blog anyway, in which case you should get out a pen and paper and write, "See therapist about voyeurism.")