Internet Determined Identity

Most people take our current technological and economic state of society for granted.. Its not a negative thing though, because if we were to constantly consciously realize what exactly is happening around us, everyone would have a mental break down. Technology has brought humanity farther than we could’ve ever imagined. Yes, true, we still don't have self-lacing shoes or a real hover-board (instead a unstable disgraceful mockery with wheels) but we are working on some exciting stuff.
Fully electric cars now have the ability to compete with cars running on gasoline, heck they can even drive for you, apps on our mini-pocket-computers-to-go (commonly known as smart phones) make banking, buying, entertainment, photography and connecting with people from all over the world through various ways as easy as we could've ever imagined and sometimes it can even answer our questions when we keep the button pressed and talk to it loudly and distinctively trying to pronounce every word as correctly as possible to make sure there are no misunderstandings when we awkwardly await the answer to our pressing question while kind of not believing that we are talking to an artificial intelligence right now. The internet is the main player in this game. It is one of the most polarizing places humans have created. Its content can fluctuate between „oh god, this must be the reason why aliens have never visited us.“ to „I have to lay down to process this mind-blowing, amazing thing I just learned/ saw“.

How much impact does our technological state have on us as individuals? Have we gained individuality or lost it? Or does it not really have an impact on our identity?

Don't set your expectations too high, because I don't have the answer.
In fact, I don't have the answer for most things. But that is my fault. In the world we live in, I could easily get any kind of information i want and learn everything I'm interested in. Its one click away. And that is my main observation:

The possibilities to learn new information and skills are endless.

But maybe that is the problem. We have gone from a world where so much was restricted, to a world, where every individual is empowered through the internet, social media and technology in a super short amount of time. Power for everyone!

First, lets use that power to define Identity: „the fact of being who or what a person or thing is“ (Oxford Dictionary). Being what you are. Well, thats suspiciously obvious. And not helpful at all.
Today this is not so simple though. Like mentioned before, technology and progress in general have made life much easier in may ways, yet our intrinsic unsettlement is still there. Every system gets much more complex when the options multiply by huge factors. You could be anything! You can do anything! But how do you chose what you do? How do you chose who you want to be?
Oddly enough laying out all your options is great, but when you have way too many options, where do you even start? (Help.) Nowadays everyone has to have a plan, going with the flow is not desired anymore and mostly not always successful. With 8 Billion people living here you have to know how to be what you are and given all these possibilities panning will clear things up.

We are complicated. Give us too limited options and we complain and want to strive for more. Give us too many options and we will get confused. We are never satisfied. This is seems to be the way things work. Things would come to halt if everyone was suddenly happy and satisfied with everything, if everyone had a exact plan laid out for their life and if everyone could exactly describe who he or she is and what they want, there would be no progress. In this sense the famously cheesy quote „the journey is the reward“ is really accurate. Life certainly is a journey and we are on a constant search for something. Ultimately, we try to find ourselves and define our existence by leaving traces of our actions on this earth. The combination of being a perfectionist, never satisfied with anything I touch and the opportunity to learn and be anything I want to be is the perfect combination for chaos, self loathing and eternal confusion. Just like this post. A rollercoaster ride from start to end. At this point the title probably doesn't even reflect the content anymore.

TLDR: The internet gives us the possibility to expand the meaning and the impact of ourselves, of our identities, of what we are. I take it upon myself to use this platform for exploration of different aspects and observations of anything that doesn't overstrain my attention span. This is what this is „blog“ is going to be. A desperate attempt to bring organization to thoughts and opinions, trying to find my internet determined identity and hopefully inspire or entertain people along this journey.
(I couldn’t have been more vague about the content thats about to come.)

nilos