Something to be glad about

I recently watched 'The Social Dilemma', the documentary that everyone seems to be talking about over the past week or so. At the end of an hour and a half, however, I find myself unable to articulate how I feel about the titular monstrosity. 

'Data' is the buzzword that most people have perched at the tip of the lip these days. There is hardly anyone who slips up on an opportunity to drop the word while in conversation - but why do we constantly talk, read and write about data? Is it because we fear it somehow ? Is it because the more it's discussed, the greater is our sense of having accomplished something by pinning down accountability on someone/ something and therefore keeping our fears at bay by giving the unknown a name and a face? 

I don't think we are afraid of data in or by itself. Rather, I think our fear is directed towards competencies that make something from such data with potentially irreversible consequences; competencies that are unknown to the average person. This is perhaps what the documentary tries to convey.

For better or worse, the  internet has definitely assumed a life of its own in the past decade or so. It has changed the pace and manner in which we consume information. With access to wifi,  anyone armed with basic literacy at best and an uninformed opinion at worst, has an opportunity to publish without a filter. ( I realise how perfectly I have set myself up here, but oh well!) A desire for instant gratification has seeped into our minds so much so that it is not just reflected in terms of our attention towards the number of likes on a social media post but also by the fact that one would rather glance through a 3 minute article on the internet than spend time reading a book. 

As a consequence of the ease in access to information (information for you and I, data for tech giants) we have all subconsciously woven a cocoon around ourselves. This often results in refusing to come out of a bubble where our thoughts are heavily influenced by what we see on the internet and what we see online is influenced by what we have already seen - a Nietzsche abyss of sorts.

The staggering levels of information made available at our disposal the instant we want to know about something has also perhaps removed much of our innocence from early on. While we are definitely more informed now as a people, it is also important to question exactly what we are more informed about and whether at all the information is accurate and reliable in any sense of the word. 

However, what are we if we don't look for silver linings in our clouds ( I desperately hope that the pun here has landed well with you, dear reader) ? So if not anything else, I do have the internet to thank for bringing to me books to read online. 

At the start of the COVID-19 induced lockdown (if you were wondering how I went five hundred words without mentioning quarantine, mask, the coronavirus, lockdown, sourdough, or productivity, well, you jinxed it), I have ordered three books online, none of which found their way home to my bookshelf. So in despair I decided to begin reading something online and in the past few months, I have read "A Suitable boy" by Vikram Seth ( I have many thoughts about this but I'm struggling to condense them into a succinct piece of a few paragraphs so that is temporarily on hold from yours truly in utter exasperation), "Love in the time of Affluenza" by Shunali Kullar Shroff and most recently, "Pollyanna" by Eleanor H Porter. 

The last is a lovely gem from children's literature that a friend recommended to me several months ago (for which I shall forever be grateful). Having read it, I truly believe that if there's one book you ought to read, this is it. Pollyanna is the perfect antidote to the blanket of bleakness that we seemed to have draped around ourselves as a consequence of this virus and what it means to us all. It's a brief read of a hundred odd pages (irrespective of the edition and/or publisher you pick) but is the right mix of warmth, innocence and a happy ending. Pollyanna is a little girl of eleven who comes to live with her aunt after the death of her parents. She elevates optimism to quite another, almost unrealistic level and manages to find something to be glad about in every situation she's hurtled into. She teaches the residents of the town to play the "Glad Game" as it's referred to in the book, and the predictable conflict in the plot being whether Pollyanna is able to practise what she preaches when misfortune strikes her down in the form of an accident. 

Written in the early twentieth century, well before the first World War, the book is set in a world that is hard to imagine as existing today. Which is perhaps exactly why it is important to read it- to realise that beyond all the data, information and news we have around us today, there is a great deal of joy in ignorance and sometimes, there's no harm in shutting yourself from the world you inhabit and diving into a world you wished you inhabited.