Checkmark assignment 1: Emerging technology

During our class discussion about possible themes of Shteyngart's Super Sad True Love Story, one of the ideas mentioned that also occurred to me in my reading of the novel was that a proliferation of technology is not always a good thing.  Though my generation is often described as tech-obsessed, I know that there are plenty of us wary of the abundance of new apps and social media sites purported to make our lives easier. For instance, just as many are troubled by ideas like those of Naomi Wolf in The Guardian about the NYPD’s use of facial recognition technology in their new surveillance system, I am unsettled by Facebook’s use of a similar technology whenever I post a picture of a friend and see that it has tagged her correctly. I do not like that a computer is familiar enough with my friends’ faces to identity them in this manner, and wonder under what circumstances an actual human is able to run their eyes over this data. Though I do appreciate Facebook for allowing me to maintain some long-distance friendships, I always do so with an eye on my privacy and try to opt out of these scanning technologies whenever possible.

However, unlike me, most young people in Shteyngart’s novel allow themselves to be wholly consumed by their technology with little regard for how much information they are dispensing. Eunice, for instance, constantly shops on her äppärät, indifferent to the fact that with a quick search of her name everyone can see that she has a penchant for “panties shaped like gift bows,” like Lenny can before he truly knows her. Almost everyone is a minor celebrity, “streaming” from their äppäräti everything from their jean size to political affiliation without considering who might hear it and judge them from afar for it, as is often the case.

The government of the novel takes full advantage of this access to endless personal data. That Eunice has to warn her sister not to discuss her plans to attend protests on GlobalTeens (a sort of futuristic Facebook) because the government might see it and punish her for it is cause for concern in a country supposedly founded on the values of free speech and assembly. Then again, this is eerily similar to the government Edward Snowden describes in his interview with The Guardian, one with such a frightening ability to intercept information about people online that Snowden felt compelled to leak its secrets to the world. 

Granted, today’s technology is not nearly as overbearing on personal privacy as that of Shteyngart’s novel—after all, no government otter has found its way onto my phone to ask prying personal questions yet. However, as long as I maintain a second social life online (along with my peers, many of whom embrace the technology that unnerves me), we will continue to move the norm toward one where the limitless sharing of personal data is commonplace, but not always used for benevolent purposes.