Title: Is technology bad for us? | Internet | The Guardian
Headings: Is technology bad for us?
The Eva Wiseman column Internet
Is technology bad for us?
Eva Wiseman

Content: Real life doesn't just happen when you're looking into someone's eyes. It happens in a series of open tabs, at a speed of clicks. It happens (as in the new short film Noah, set entirely on a teenager's computer) on screen. To dismiss this half of our world as "unreal" leads to people believing their actions there, behind a cartoon avatar and cartoon name, have no repercussions. That a racist insult typed out on a laptop has less weight than one shouted across a carpark. That in "unreal life" it's not a person you're shouting at on Twitter, it's a hologram. A shadow. It's the same naivety that leads to the thinking that in our "unreal life" everything is free and nothing really matters. Piece by piece, we've learned that the sites that are the floors and walls of the internet have access to all our information. But the sinister thing about this, is not necessarily that they own our secrets, but that we weren't aware we'd given them away.