Olsonology

Evan Ratliff is running. For $3,000, he sold his car, left a home in San Francisco, and is spending his days eluding a unified national team of searchers who are combing through his files and public persona to search him out within a month, motivated by the bounty of $5,000 offered up by Wired magazine. The searchers have already amassed an impressive amount of data and organized as correspondents who know actual locations so the right one is on hand for searching and sighting at any given time. Of course, this kind of public handholding has shortcomings as well; Evan can watch them correspond and react.

There was a time when people went online to hide and recreate. It was anonymous, virtual, the alternate reality defined by choice rather than nature. Increasingly, though, online identity is merging and aligning with the real. Certainly, plenty of Mad Men and anime avatars still appear in any given Facebook feed, but even these cartoonish personal representations appear to be rarely chosen for some subversive ability to confuse people. Accuracy is demanded from animation. And while individuals may feel that they’re choosing to be part of this move toward transparency and exposure, advances in technology are laying souls bare with all the determination of a 10-year-old brother seeking a sister’s hidden diary. How does one hide when messages are data-tagged with the coordinates, time and date where they were written. Or falsify an identity when the paperwork and filings of our past are preserved in pixel-perfect memory?

During that time when people went online to hide, the most powerful tools on the Internet were the ones that enabled search. Impassive guardians of a mysteriously deep pool of information, they presented results and misdirection in equal measure. Now, the most powerful tools are the ones that connect friends. We discover new things to love from people we love. And in turn, we receive feedback, affirmation, and news that we know we’ll care about. In a world where the available data threatens to overwhelm with sheer accessibility, the shared perspective that makes us friends also implies that what they recommend to us will be items that are relevant and impactful.

Maybe it’s meaningful that as the associations online become more difficult to delete, they also become more genuine. Part of me wants Evan to run, and win, to outsmart the machine. But a bigger part of me wants him to be found. Somehow I feel that no matter who eventually finds him, it will be a meeting of friends.

Julianna Simon, Brand Anthropologist