The digital age takes the mundane and makes it massive. It forces us to obsess as it does. It creates a a giant echo chamber of navel gazers.
A person of some prominence dies. It is a shock and surprising. It is sad. And in years past it would be noted with dignity.
Dignity does not fly in the digital age. Instead, we have hour upon hour of coverage when, in all honesty, there isn't much more to say that wasn't said in the first ten minutes. This is not a criticism of the man who has moved on. He made a mark in his field and left large shoes to fill. It is merely an observation about the medium for which that man toiled. The medium has lost one of its own and the medium must make sure all of us are made acutely aware of the importance of the medium and the way that is done is to immortalize one of its fallen leaders.
Part of this is due to the great void of the digital age. Unlimited channel capacity is not always a good thing, as any quick tour around the dial shows. The digital age should have made the world smaller. Instead it made it narrower. All this capacity and capability to show more of the world on the small screen and instead we see less of it now than we did thirty years ago.
Routine events have become cataclysmic. The beast must be fed and here is free food. Of course, the end result is that these events become so overblown that they lose the significance. And the echo chamber booms so loud and so fast that it becomes meaningless. The digital age gives the impression of making us all part of a family. Thousands of people can post comments about something and feel part of something that they really are not. The illusion of togetherness and intimacy is one of the great achievements of 21st century technology.
Those who are actually hurting are forced to feel their pain and heal their pain at a pace dictated to them by the medium. And the medium will be on to something else in twenty four hours. They force us to chew, swallow and excrete without actually digesting. And then we wonder why we're so empty inside.
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2 comments:
We see less of the world than 30 years ago and more of what? Ourselves? Others? Being at McLean last summer with the next generation was interesting. They were asked what they would bring with them to a desert island, and many responded "my laptop," disregarding the fact that laptops need power from something or they quickly turn into pieces of junk metal.
The computer can offer a window into others, like your blog does with you. More often, though, it turns into advertisements for yourself, the identity you'd like to have.
This would make a good op-ed piece.
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