Unanticipated Technological Sadnesses

Typically, I find the unanticipated – and occasionally perverse – consequences of technological innovation fascinating.  And today, experiencing one of those, I did find it interesting – but my interest in it paled in comparison to how sad it made me.  So, what happened?

I’ve been catching up on email this morning.  One of those emails was to a friend named Marc.  And when I started to type in his name, Mail’s auto-complete suggested another friend of mine named Mark, who as far as I know is still in a coma, having been hit by a drunk driver in October of 2007.  But I can’t bring myself to take him out of my Address Book.  It’d be like admitting he was really gone, and somehow, I’m just not ready to do that.

Now, that happens pretty frequently with Mark – he’s a Facebook friend, we shared obscure musical tastes that I now have trouble indulging, and we have a lot of other friends in common.  So I’m kind of used to seeing his name pop up and feeling that little twinge of sadness that he’s no longer there to poke or talk to or commiserate with.  But then, continuing on with my email, it happened again.

The second time, I was sending an email to my advisor, whose name is Joe.  And I paused for a moment in typing his name, and Mail helpfully offered me the email address of another Joe, my Glacier Climbing classmate who died on Mt. Baker last June.  Now, Joe’s not even in my Address Book, as far as I’m aware; Mail must have just been using a list of previously-used addresses.  And I don’t encounter Joe’s name or countenance often, since we weren’t tremendously close – but his death was nonetheless traumatic for me and many of my friends.  So, again, twinge.

Now, to me, this seems pretty akin to the phenomenon of “MyDeathSpace,” which links to the MySpace profiles of members who have passed away… And just the fact that I could find an open-web link for each of my friends saying what had happened to them seems indicative of…something.  I suppose it just makes me think about the traces we now leave all over the Web – and even on the hard drives of friends and acquaintances – when we ourselves pass away or otherwise cease to be able to participate in society in our own right.  Now, when we aren’t around any longer, those who care about us can be reminded of us in ever more numerous and potentially heartbreaking ways, just by continuing to use the social technologies we used to share with them.  

I mean, honestly: when Mail suggests that maybe I’d like to send my email to Mark, I can’t help but think, Yes, yes I would love to send my email to Mark. I would love to write to Mark and hear from Mark and have Mark still be a part of my social world.  And I would love to have had the opportunity to get to be better friends with Joe, who seemed wonderful.  Who knows, perhaps if things had been different, I would indeed be addressing emails to him now.  As it is, though, it just makes me well up a little, thinking about what’s not there any longer.

…And I’m sorry for the depressing post.  I’m not, like, actually depressed, or anything.  The sadness of technology’s insensitivity to changing social worlds just really struck me this morning.