Edward Snowden's 'Permanent Record' and Patricia Lockwood's 'No One is Talking About This' Reveal the Modern Internet

 

Edward Snowden's memoir Permanent Record was released in 2019. Snowden has lived in Moscow, Russia since the United States revoked his Passport.

Two Books, One Fiction and the Other a Memoir, Shed Light on Online Life and the Nature of the Modern Internet

I recently finished reading Edward Snowden's Permanent Record as well as Patricia Lockwood's No One is Talking About This. Both books use the Internet as their main subject, but in very different ways. As my readers know, the Internet and digital technologies such as Uber, ride sharing apps, and social media permeate our daily lives. Permanent Record and No One is Talking About This reveal what effects this daily immersion in the digital is having on us - both now and in the long term.

Permanent Record is probably the better known of the two books, since it was written by former NSA Systems Administrator Edward Snowden, who has been living in Moscow since 2013 when the American State Department cancelled his Passport while he was en route from Hong Kong to Ecuador.

In his book, Snowden describes in vivid detail the panic and fear that occurred in America on 9/11 when the Twin Towers fell. This tragedy embarrassed America's Intelligence Community because it did not prevent the attacks from happening.

To prevent future terror attacks on American soil, agencies such as the NSA began a mission to both digitize intelligence, and then preserve these digital files for perpetuity. Snowden gives the reader context and describes how the Internet's physical architecture, Servers and so forth, is almost completely made from American technology. Therefore America 'owns' the Internet. Which paved the way for programs such as the NSA's XKEYSCORE - a program that allows agency analysts to access the digital index of almost anyone on the Planet. This includes chat logs, text messages, video calls made over the Internet and more. Big Brother is indeed watching us.

This was just some of the information that Snowden revealed to Journalists in 2013 over the course of several days in Hong Kong.

In addition to being a talented Systems Administrator and encryption expert, Snowden possesses a fluid writing style that is enjoyable to read. If you are still curious about the man after reading his book, I recommend Oliver Stone's Snowden, which stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Stone's film is a slightly fictionalized account of the events related in Permanent Record, though it remains mostly true to the source material.

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Patricia Lockwood's No One is Talking About This is by turns both funny and tragic.

Patricia Lockwood's No One is Talking About This is a wonderful, strange book. Recently long listed for the Man Booker Prize, No One is Talking About This is a collection of fragments. Some of them beautiful. Some horrible. Others just irredeemably strange.

The novel's main character is clearly Lockwood herself. A woman who was made famous for such Tweets as, "Can a Dog be Twins?" Or another one sent to the Paris Review, a well known literary magazine, that asked: "So is Paris any good or not?"

Lockwood's central idea in this book is that people today are being molded by a collective Internet addiction.

In Lockwood's words: "When we hit the button, all we were getting to be was more of a Rat."

She has a point. How many times have you woken up in the dead of night, unable to sleep, only to turn on your Smartphone so that you could check Twitter's feed? From my own life experiences I have no doubt that social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, have both shortened attention spans as well as created an expectation of near instantaneous responses from our fellow Humans.

That said, the book's first half is filled with hilarious fragments that are plays on Lockwood's central idea. One of the novel's most entertaining passages reads as follows:

"How is your work going these days?" he asked over Breakfast and she recalled a recent event where she got legally high with some booksellers, became convinced she was dying, drank an entire pitcher of Cucumber water, and then fell to the ground so slowly that she accidentally showed the entire room her snatch, all the while crying out for someone to Call an Ambulance. On reflection, she felt no shame."

The second half of the novel concerns itself with Lockwood's sister. Her sister gives birth to a child with a rare genetic abnormality. This makes the Protagonist realize that her limited time with the child is precious. So she retreats from the often frivolous and insubstantial online world to help her sister care for the Infant. This human element brings the novel back to Earth and makes the story more relatable.

I think No One is Talking About This is a strong contender for the Man Booker Prize because it reveals the strange moment of the present. All the joy and terror of having such enormous amounts of information a mere keystroke away.

The Social Network - Nothing Particularly 'Social' About Zuckerberg

I watched The Social Network today, David Fincher's new film about Facebook founder and CEO wunderkind Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) This film deserves all of the praise and then some that it's been receiving from critics at The New York Times, The Globe and Mail and a slew of other media outlets.

Worth mentioning even before I venture into the plot's details is the sharpness of the writing. From Aaron Sorkin's pen to the mouths of Fincher's talented cast, the dialogue in The Social Network is so intelligent, so sarcastic, so cutting that it nearly pops off the screen. Jesse Eisenberg's deadpan delivery and frequent glowering stare as he cuts down both friend and foe is worth the ticket price on its own.

The Social Network is based on Ben Mezrich's book, The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal. The movie's structure jumps back and forth in time, from the events of Facebook's founding to a tense deposition in a boardroom where two parties suing Zuckerberg go for the jugular. You see, after Facebook was founded Zuckerberg was sued by former best friend Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) and the upper class Winklevoss twins (Armie Hammer in a dual role) Saverin was betrayed and the Winklevoss twins had their idea for a social networking site stolen by Zuckerberg, or so they claimed.

Since the movie is about Facebook's founding, it's only fitting the beating heart should be Zuckerberg himself. As played by Eisenberg he is all towering intellect and calculation. Behind his often blank-faced exterior (rarely do you see a smile play across this boy genius's face) is a mind that's constantly calculating and re-calculating. Not 'friendless' as some of the film's reviews have said, he is nonetheless nearly so. There's nothing in the character's personality that I could call emotional intelligence. There are rare moments of sympathy he displays for others, but these are outweighed by his mind's ledger of past slights and desire to avenge said.

Watching this film, I found it interesting to note that Zuckerberg is the least physical of all the movie's characters. While his Harvard classmates hook up and periodically pat each other affectionately, Zuckerberg remains aloof.

In one scene an enthusiastic Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) moves to embrace Zuckerberg after Facebook subscribers pass the one million mark. There is no reciprocation for Parker; the results are, well... awkward. Awkward could neatly describe all of this damaged genius's social interactions. For someone who created the most popular online social networking tool in the world, the irony is that Facebook's founder is socially inept.

But back to Sean Parker. He's the same Sean Parker who invented Napster. In The Social Network he seeks out Zuckerberg and proceeds to ingratiate himself, smelling an appealing new business venture. Timberlake really shines here — he's figured out why a flashy party boy like Parker could connect with an introverted nerd like Zuckerberg. The answer is charisma. Parker is a sparking live wire with his shows of material wealth, dazzling smile and high voltage presence. To Zuckerberg he presents a glamorous alternative to a life of coding, more coding and sleep, which is what Zuckerberg does in the movie when he's not struggling to interact with others.

The Social Network is certainly a movie for our time. Thirst for social status, lust for money, betrayal, and connection with other human beings (or lack thereof) are all deftly addressed here.

The only fault I can find with The Social Network is when one character claims, "The Internet's written in ink, Mark. It's not written in pencil." Actually the Internet is just a string of digital information. As a lasting record, the Internet comes nowhere near the permanency of ink, especially when all those zeroes and ones and Facebook 'friend' connections can vanish with the click of a button.