The Art Bit

As Americans spend more and more time plugged in, many have worried about technology’s effects on human interaction and social capability. What most have applauded, however, is the creation and spread of tools to new groups who have never had access to them. Many of these tools are useful for creating and spreading art. Instagram allows people to share pictures, museum websites allow remote populations experience these institutions’ art, and YouTube gives anyone with a computer free access to everything from Ravel's String Quartet to Destiny Child’s Bootylicious. It seems that the obvious result of this process would be an irrepressible explosion in the quantity and types of artistic expression, on new mediums and with different people. The process has not been so simple. Instead, technology’s influx of possibilities has turned our gaze inward while nominally looking outward.

"Selfies" and social media only serve to reinforce this trend. Though social media help us connect with friends and colleagues, the ulterior motive is to put the spotlight on the self. The new “Shots of Me” is an app that focuses only on selfies (pictures of yourself that are meant to be shared), the ultimate exercise in narcissism. Programs like Photoshop allow for virtual perfection that can be shared, and Photoshop’s younger (very successful) cousin Instagram is a social offshoot of the idea. However, more traditional social media are also narcissistic: Twitter gives us the tools to speak our thoughts to the world at large, and Facebook is literally a collection of facts, photos, and thoughts about ourselves, describing its new timeline as a tool to “tell your life story with a new kind of profile.”

Narcissism is not the only downside to this sharing, as the social media generation has begun to discover—people are not always honest on the Internet. Though these frauds include the usual collection of identity thieves, predators, and other unsavory characters, not everyone is of their ilk; the category now also includes people like you and me, lying because they want to look better. Selfies can be edited, Facebook accounts can be falsified, and one couldsound smart on Twitter by writing a post with a dictionary in hand.

Projecting a perfect self goes beyond technologies that focus the spotlight on one’s self. A well-rounded internet presence must include curation. The original curator blogging service Tumblr has inspired the Pinterests of the world. It encourages curation of pictures from around the web in a manner similar to old-school fashion blogs, formatted with collections (or "boards") of pictures and short descriptions that act as inspiration for the perfect wedding, the perfect outfit, or the perfect life.

Visual sites may lend themselves to curation, but SoundCloud has extended the concept. SoundCloud originally existed as a place for people to share the music they created, but it also encourages its users to share music. Though creators are respected, someone with a well-curated sense of musical style looks "better" in the eyes of his internet friends. Spotify operates on a similar sharing platform, as the original program encourages users to share what they were listening to.

In addition to the obvious, more artsy technologies, social media have extended to the realm of education. With services like Duolingo, millions of people who had not previously been able to afford language lessons or software now have access to an effective program for learning new languages, including English as a second language. Suddenly, self-improvement is possible, easy, and encouraged. Duolingo also acts as a social media site—friends can connect with you and track your progress. Doing well is showing off.

In an ironic twist, the vast improvements we have seen in technology allowing us to connect with each other have caused us to focus an inordinate amount of our attention inward. With social media, the world is our mirror, and we all want to know: who is the fairest (and smartest, and funniest, and nicest) of them all?

—Staff writer Sara Kantor can be reached at sara.kantor@thecrimson.com.