Where can you get fortune cookies outside of a Chinese restaurant, and who wants the actual cookie when the teeny slip of paper inside is the most satisfying part? In the private confines of our rooms, we have access to Amherst's public diary: planworld. Each time you log on, planworld presents you with cookies of wisdom: little inspirational quotes that signal your free entry into cyber space.
A haven for lyrics, complaints and personal ads, further used as a bulletin board for social and political discourse, planworld is a self-censored network with total access guaranteed. planworld is ranked detective-on the Harriet the Spy level that is-as gossip and relationships, breakups and hookups are sometimes explicit, sometimes implied, always developing. Post-its for on-campus events, advertisements for community service and reactions ranging from the Economics exam to the Bush Administration flood this arena. Plans can even answer your most probing identity crises, providing direct links to personality quizzes: "What 90210 character are you?" and more culturally, "Are you more Monet or Pollack?" or more epicurean in nature, "Bud Light or Guinness?" Some plans are more fancy than others, transporting you from the standard background format to pitch black with neon green font, flashy scanned or downloaded pictures, some even advertising music or soundbytes. All senses become involved once you enter this field of dreams and doodads; irrelevant and random on some levels, highly entertaining on others. Is it all "tomfoolery" as the cookie suggests (and what the heck is tomfoolery, is it part of our 21st-century vocabulary?) Or does this tomfoolery speak to who we are as students and shape the way we interact?
As long as you know the middle initial, you can track a day in the life of any student with a plan from behind a screen, all such personal information made available by the click of a mouse. It does not matter whether the student lives next door or is studying across the Atlantic, planworld conquers all boundaries large and small. The great divides amongst 1600 students are eliminated by simply logging on to a pool of names, statistics and snoops that few other schools share.
The student body has even created planworld terminology: the site itself has been renamed the "Stalkernet," a somewhat disturbing yet appropriate label for those excessively dependent on tracking campus activity. When you stop checking plans for extended periods of time (read: 48 hours max) you are diagnosed with having "plan withdrawal," and the list goes on. There are those who log on but do not actually have registered plans; these "users" without plans, who amount to about 30 percent of the planworld population (according to the recorded stats), participate on a peripheral level, secret voyeurs without a name for themselves. There is even a snitch feature which allows students to view who has checked their plan and who is "stalking them," but as all good things come at a cost, there is a snag in snitch-you have to register yourself for snitch, which means others can see if you have checked their plans. Thus, you exit the world of anonymity and private eyes and enter a more personal realm of show-and-tell. What makes this phenomenon, equipped with its own set of rules, regulations, and vocabulary, so popular?
Perhaps one of the main illuminations of this e-campus life is the intersection of identities and the sense of power a student experiences because of being able to "stalk" anyone. However, this power only extends so far, as one must keep in mind that plans are edited for the public eye. Whether they are personal recaps of one's day, statements of intent, comical attacks on friends or recounts of Saturday night blunders, each plan is written for an audience. Many students write material to initiate reaction, to accumulate snoops and this, in the end, boils down to recognition. (For those who struggle with planworld terminology, the snoop feature allows students to create live links to other students' plans.) The planworld community, in some senses, is a prototype for networking: whom you have on your "planwatch," and to whom you create active links is seemingly social in origin, however utterly political in effect.
planworld is archival in quality. Not only does it maintain an alphabetical list of the people you snoop, but it saves your entries every time you update your plan so that you may return for nostalgic reflection or simple verification. Once you click on the small globe on the corner of your Webmail screen, you are transported to a web of connections that even email and Instant Messanger cannot provide. You have the feeling of interconnectedness that; if deserted for a week or two, can leave you out of the loop and "social scene," which evolves without any physical interaction necessary. The combination of Instant Messanger and planworld seems to replace many of the direct interactions that students have on campus. In turn, a paradox is created-while we believe we have access to personal files, we reach these files through impersonal methods, sit by ourselves, in the quietude of our dorm rooms, and feign interactions with the public through text on the screen. How do we draw the line between personal and public, when they intersect without warning?
We have arrived in the 21st century, at one time, children of the '80s who have lived through Paula Abdul and Vanilla Ice, mullets and stonewashed denim. We have seen the coming of America Online, have experienced the first exciting, albeit slow, interactions with the Internet, and have grown used to the interactive, musical beeps of Instant Messanger that fill each dorm room. I am guilty of even conversing with my own roommates through this happy medium. I'm so dependent upon my laptop that it might as well be glued to my lap and planworld only enhances this technological triumph of typing over verbal skills.
Although I am addicted and completely reliant on such structures, I am also frustrated that IM and planworld have become substitutes for face-to-face interchanges. Both have become copouts for the interactions we should have in a small liberal arts school. Perhaps through these mediums we are given the convenience of communication and the courage to type messages that we would not feel comfortable conveying face-to-face-but should convenient interchange take precedence over personal contact? Face-to-face interactions are undermined by the barrier of screens and wires. The seeming courage that this indirect form of communication provides turns into cowardice. Can we keep hiding behind walls, conversing through beeps, posting messages about our lives and treating planworld like a multitude of sacred texts? This "ennobling" of information, merely because it has passed through "a very expensive machine" as the cookie implies, can be hazardous on some levels. Boundaries have to be drawn between worlds. Although planworld is indicative of the Amherst culture on many levels and should not be undermined, it should definitely be criticized and not simply taken for granted as a technological advancement. Can we drudge up the inner courage and deny the web from drawing us into its selfish snare? Can we exist as socially adept students in public, or must we reproduce such circumstances in the private domains of our rooms?