The Omniscient Narrator Strikes Back

One of the features that caught my attention from modern literature is the shift of the narrator's role, which moved from an omnicient being who knew every single feeling, circumstances and thoughts (sometimes even more clearly and deeply than the characters themselves) to someone who could -or could not- be a main character within the story with all the limitations that any of us really has when trying to understand another person or a situation itself. However, did the omnicient narrator really die after these changes in its conception? I strongly believe he did not.

Nowadays it is becoming increasingly common to be constantly expecting to know almost everything about people that -putting it bluntly- we do not even care about, the question is: why (and how) is it happening? If you turn on your computer, and one of the first sites you actually log in to is facebook, you can probably get where I am going.

In the latest years, it has become almost an everyday thing to consider normal to be able to know in a matter of minutes answers to questions like: when is somebody's birthday, what is his/her current relationship status, who are his/her brothers, sisters, parents, cousins, etc (and even what they look like, where they live, etc), where this person has been today (or yesterday, or last month, or a year ago), where did he or she spend his holidays, and almost an infinite realm of possible questions more. It is a lot of information that you can even receive totally unwantedly, isn't it? Obviously, it is totally ok if you want to share certain aspects of your life, but what amazes me is how easy it is to do so nowaday, and especially how much information you can easily retrieve from people who are not even that close to you.

Far from a criticism to social networks like facebook (or the ways it can be used), the point I am actually trying to make is that maybe the omniscient narrator did not die, he just found a new job.