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The Naked Crowd
Technology has transformed the lives of every person it has touched. Dating
back to as far as people can remember, new technologies have always been
constantly invented to make the lives of every person easier or more importantly,
allow communication over great distances possible. In this day and age,
communication has become the main focus for major technology breakthroughs.
The technology that is most directly related to the increase in the demand for
communication-oriented things is the Internet. It has reached a point, however,
where it has integrated itself into society itself. Individuality, privacy, and reality
have taken a backseat to what the Internet has transformed the very thought of how
people communicate and ultimately have changed how society interacts and trusts
one another. This is mainly due to the versatility of the Internet to allow people to
view more information, post more information, and chat with strangers around the
globe, all with the push of a button through social media type websites. This
promptly pushed society into attempting to follow the “Naked Crowd” by inputting
the image that being recognized by everybody who may or may not know you in a
skewed goal to achieve individuality. This issue was raised in Jeffrey Rosen’s essay,
“The Naked Crowd”. In the essay, Rosen presented a numerous amount of facts to
support his claim about how communication-oriented technology has reshaped
society’s original feeling of anxiety towards exposing our personal lives to strangers,
to now openly doing so without a second thought. He believes that society’s
desperate attempt to differentiate itself from the crowd results in catering to the
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crowd’s insatiable demand for exposure and we are to willing to surrender privacy
for an illusory sense of emotional connection and security that will be understood to
be a grave mistake only after it is too late (487). He strongly asserts his belief in how
technology such as the Internet has transformed the original feeling of acceptance
only when a deep personal relationship is formed between people to acceptance
now being who can expose information about themselves the most in hopes of not
being looked at as a recluse to the world.
Jeffrey Rosen’s first main claim involved how over-exposure was once a great
fear for any person in society, and now it has taken a full 180-degree turn. People
originally disdained the very idea of having to interact with a stranger let alone
expose themselves to one. According to Rosen, it now appears it is a norm and the
