No Secrets in the Internet Generation

I was out driving around the other afternoon and my iPod had died. I pushed play on the CD deck on my car stereo and encountered one of my ancient mix CD's. I was with my mother-in-law so I wanted to keep things very much in line with her time period. "White Rabbit" or "Strawberry Fields." I didn't have too much from the late 60's on this mix CD. I did, though, have the Tom Waits track "Martha" from his 1973 record "Closing Time." I thought maybe that should work for our errands to pick up dinner.

As we were driving though, I listened closely to the lyrics and I realized how totally stuck in time this track was. How this song may have even been possible to imagine a handful of years ago, but how, in this modern era, a song like "Martha" was all but impossible.

The lyrics may shed some light on this fact:

"Martha" by Tom Waits

"Operator, number please, it's been so many years

She remembers my old voice, while I fight the tears

'Hello, hello there is this Martha? This is old Tom Frost

I am calling long distance, don't worry 'bout the cost

Cause it's been 40 years or more now Martha please recall

Meet me out for coffee; where we'll talk about it all -- '"

I thought about this opening stanza taking place in the modern day and it just doesn't seem possible. With the Internet, social networking, websites like Facebook, and just the sheer volume of information available to people these days; an occasion where you don't hear from someone for 40 years means that they just didn't want to talk to you!

My mother in law; perhaps spurned on by the languid song; had an interesting story which goes along with this. She was telling me about one of her co-workers at an old job of hers that she had learned died recently. She found out through another co-worker or something like that; she seemed troubled by the news.

"I don't read the obituaries every day," she began, "and I'm never on the computer, so there's the chance I may not have ever found out about this."

Yes, but she did find out about it; that's the thing I think is so remarkable. This mother in law of mine is technophobic. She uses the computer sparingly and gets easily overwhelmed when she gets hundreds of junk mails in her inbox every week or two when she logs on. I have tried to help her by unsubscribing to many of these but still her email inbox keeps growing. She's all but written off Facebook; "Why do I want people knowing where I am?" she's asked. Her profile is little more than her name and friends and family members futile attempts to contact her.

There once was a time when legend could seep around an individual and people could all but disappear from the world. Even that though has gone the way of yesterday. I had a friend, Erica, who I worked with at the Screen Actors Guild in New York City. We worked together in 2005; she was from my home state. This was around the time when everyone was getting onto Facebook and Erica actually had one of the earlier invites to Facebook; we became friends when I eventually joined.

Erica quickly left the website though. She, like my mother in law, seemed suspicious of people knowing too much about her. Still, if I wanted to get in touch with Erica, I'd know how to do it. One of our co-workers from SAG, Paula, whom I'm also Facebook friends with; would be able to reach out to her. I also have her cell phone number and email address so I could reach her that way too.

That's the thing; no matter how much we try and stay off the map, there's always going to be someone who knows where you are or is able to find you somehow. In the days of MySpace I used to be worried that my then girlfriend would be jealous that I was friends with people I'd had relationships with (or crushes on) before. For my wife now, that's no longer an issue. We are married on Facebook and that's gospel. She knows now many of my acquaintances and much to my delight has even become good friends with some of them.

It's no longer possible for people to go off into the underworld, unnoticed. These days it seems a cellular number is as much a positive identifier as a Social Security number. We weep for simpler times when the world was easy and relationships rose and fall like the natural tides. Now it's clear that there is no such thing as your former life anymore; merely a collection of people you know or have known and your different degrees of closeness.