I Disappeared from the Internet

Tom Kando 

The other day, I tried to log onto my website. First, I just Googled myself, typing in my name. Later, I typed in my website’s name. I got nowhere both ways. 

When I typed in my name, thousands of search results came up, as usual. Many of the first few start with my name followed by various things. Then, scrolling down the first few pages of search results, you encounter more and more slightly distorted entries, some sites with a middle initial, and further down an increasing number of websites with names that resemble mine but have nothing to do with me, many in Japan, Africa and elsewhere. 

So I start clicking on some of the first few entries, those that spell my name correctly, and you know what? Nothing comes up. Instead of opening the website that I click on, Google sends me a terse computerese message telling me that this website and this person do not exist.

Uncanny! I no longer exist! Anyone on the planet who tries to Google me via my name will now find out that I don’t exist. 

So now, I am facing the Internet and Google. I am of the opinion that I exist, but they assert the opposite. I would like to protest. A protest begins by stating one’s case, and for that, one needs an interlocutor - the party whom one addresses.. So who do I talk to? To whom do I present my case, my complaint stating that I exist, and that anyone who claims the opposite is wrong? 

To address Google and the Internet is similar to addressing God. You express what you want to express, but you are not sure what form the response - if any - will take. 

Also, you suck it up and assume that even if the objective situation will not change, you will receive some internal encouragement or signal indicating that there is nothing to worry about, that everything will be okay, because everything is predestined anyway. Que Sera Sera. 

So it now says on my computer that I don’t exist. But I don’t feel the worse for it. In fact, I feel fine. Assuming that no one is able to find me on the Internet any longer, how does that affect me? It does not, unless I make it so. The vast majority of the parties that contact me these days are spam, wanting one thing and only one thing from me - money. Good riddance. 

The part of my life that consists of face-to-face interaction continues. I am still able to contact people, by telephone and in other ways. It’s only the Internet and Google who positively state that I don’t exist. When I interact with a live person, he/she most definitely acts as if I exist. Are they just being clever and pretending? 

The problem is that the digital revolution has created a world in which what exists and what does not exist are intermingled. And let me not even start about Artificial Intelligence. Many people are - lemming-like - rushing down that road, come what may. Madness. The distinction between what exists and what does not is being erased. Any piece of writing, any music played, any drawing drawn may have been produced by a real person - or not. Who knows. 

But back to me: My existence depends on whether I can prove it or not. Part of my effort to contact the Internet and Google must consist of a request for advice: What do they accept as proof that I exist? Are there programs, software, algorithms that I can use to prove to Google and the Internet that I exist? 

By the same token, maybe I can type things into my computer that will ALTER who I am. Let me create a different name, a new made-up domain and create some content. Voila. I am someone else, on the Internet. What is the role of Google and the Internet, in determining who I am? 

The problem is not so much the uneven playing field - I am one puny individual, and Google and the Internet are monstrous assemblages of sextillions of bytes. Descartes’s proof was cogito ergo sum. Hamlet asked the central question - To Be or Not to Be? Sartre wrote about Being and Nothingness, showing that existence precedes essence. It is possible that I am an illusion. Google may be right. leave comment here