Notes on a Nervous Planet(15)

Google symptoms and self-diagnose (just because you are a hypochondriac it doesn’t mean you aren’t actually dying).

Google things – any things (‘number of atoms in a human body’, ‘turmeric health benefits’, ‘cast of West Side Story’, ‘how to download photos from iCloud’) – after midnight.

Check how a tweet/photo/status update is going down (and keep checking).

Want to go offline, without going offline.





The world is shrinking

LIFE OVERLOAD IS a feeling that partly stems from how contracted and concentrated the world seems to have become. The human world has sped up and has effectively shrunk, too. It is becoming more connected, and as it becomes more connected, so are we. The ‘hive mind’ – first coined in a science fiction short story, ‘Second Night of Summer’ by James H. Schmitz, in 1950 – is now a reality. Our lives, information and emotions are connected in ways they have never been before. The internet is unifying even as it seems to divide.

This shrinking of the world hasn’t been an overnight process. Humans have been communicating further than their voices allow for centuries. Using everything from smoke signals to drums to pigeons. A chain of signal beacons from Plymouth to London announced the arrival of the Spanish Armada.

In the 19th century the electrical telegraph connected continents.

Then the global nervous system evolved with the telephone, radio, television and, of course, the internet.

These connections are, in many ways, making us ever closer. We can email or text or Skype or Facetime or play multiplayer online games in real time with people 10,000 miles away. Physical distance is increasingly irrelevant. Social media has enabled collective action like never before, from riots to revolutions to shock election results. The internet has enabled us to join together and make change happen. For better and for worse.

The trouble is that if we are plugged in to a vast nervous system, our happiness – and misery – is more collective than ever. The group’s emotions become our own.





Mass hysterics

THERE ARE THOUSANDS of examples in history of individuals getting their emotions influenced by the crowd, from the Salem witch trials to Beatlemania.

One of the most amusing/frightening examples is the case of the French convent in the 15th century where a nun began to miaow like a cat. Pretty soon, other nuns started to miaow, too. And within a few months the nearby villagers were startled to hear all the nuns miaowing for several hours a day in a loud cat chorus. They only stopped miaowing when the local authorities threatened to whip them.

There are other odd examples. Such as the Dancing Plague of 1518, where, over the course of a month, 400 people in Strasbourg danced themselves to the point of collapse – and in some cases death – for no understandable reason. No music was even playing.

Or during the Napoleonic Wars when, legend has it, the inhabitants of Hartlepool, England, collectively convinced themselves that a shipwrecked monkey was a French spy and hanged the poor, confused primate. Fake news has been around for a while.

And now, of course, we have a technology – the internet – that makes collective group behaviour more possible and more likely. Different things – songs, tweets, cat videos – go viral on a daily, or hourly, basis. The word ‘viral’ is perfect at describing the contagious effect caused by the combination of human nature and technology. And, of course, it isn’t just videos and products and tweets that can be contagious. Emotions can be, too.

A completely connected world has the potential to go mad, all at once.





Baby steps

IT WAS THE same again. ‘Matt, get off the internet.’

Andrea was right, and she was only looking after me, but I didn’t want to hear it.

‘It’s fine.’

‘It’s not fine. You’re having an argument with someone. You’re writing a book about how to cope with the stress of the internet and you’re getting stressed on the internet.’

‘That’s not really what it’s about. I’m trying to understand how our minds are affected by modernity. I’m writing about the world as a nervous planet. How our psychology is connected. I’m writing about all aspects of a—’

She held up her palm. ‘Okay. I don’t want the TED talk.’

I sighed. ‘I’m just getting back to an email.’

‘No. No, you aren’t.’

‘Okay. I’m on Twitter. But there’s one point I’ve just got to get across—’

‘Matt, it’s up to you. But I thought the whole idea was that you were doing all this to try to work out how not to get like this.’

‘Like what?’

‘So wrapped up in stuff you shouldn’t be wrapped up in. I just don’t want you ill. This is how you get ill. That’s all.’

She left the room. I stared at the tweet I was about to post. It wasn’t going to add anything to my life. Or anyone else’s life. It was just going to lead to more checking of my phone, like Pepys with his pocket watch. I pressed delete, and felt a strange relief as I watched each letter disappear.





An ode to social media

When anger trawls the internet,

Looking for a hook;

It’s time to disconnect,