Reflections 8
Another shot from Lady Vervaine's series of bus window reflections. (You may have to adjust your monitor to see it clearly, depending on your brightness settings, etc...) This image brought to mind a powerful & disturbing piece of writing I came across recently:
"The techological web we inhabit endeavours with every new development to isolate us further from each other (iPods, cell-phone movies, Gameboys, email) and from the larger social whorl (HD TVs, hundreds of 24/7 cable stations, video home delivery, minivan DVD players, the internet).
Entertainment technology in previous decades was a minor ingredient in the texture of our lives; when not watching or listening to our limited broadcast or theatrical options, we were taking part in the flow of humanity. Social intercourse defined us and our responsibilities to the world.
Today, we are consumers first, citizens second, and the castle of distraction we've built around ourselves is itself little more than a series of revenue streams devised to exploit us. We face it alone every day, slowly ceding to it control over our priorities and viewpoints."
- Mike Atkinson
Sight & Sound, April 2007
Comments and faves
vankufer (61 months ago | reply)
Hello there dear lady,
Isn't that what they want you to think.
Mike has it wrong that entertainment, in previous decades was a minor ingredient. In the sentence right after that one, he assumes that we have no social intercourse.
We are not consumers first, we are what we want to be.
All of the technology he talks about doesn't isolate us.
All of those things are tools that we use. Just like the atom and everything else in this God given world. We choose our own way of interacting with the world.
I think Mike should buy a digital camera and get a Flickr account or maybe go and give his mother a hug. :)
I'm going away now, see you in 3 months.
vankufer and cattycamehome added this photo to their favorites.
cattycamehome (61 months ago | reply)
What a treat for the end of the working week - I'd hoped we'd not seen the last of these. He emerges wonderfully from the darkness.
The "castle of distraction" is a great discription - if we are honest I think we all use technology to isolate ourselves at times.
Turn on, tune in and drop out!
areyarey added this photo to his favorites. (61 months ago)
Sati Kobashi (busy - mostly off) (61 months ago | reply)
I was thinking about it and perhaps it can be contributing to the increase of depression cases - I guess you know that the depression is the "disease of exclusion", emotionally speaking.
Thanks for sharing the article and to portray it with such a perfect picture!
the jimmyjames (61 months ago | reply)
Sight & Sound is a fantastic magazine. Sadly I had to let my subscription lapse a couple of years ago as I wasn't having time to read it. But this reminds me how good it was.
Dead Air added this photo to his favorites. (61 months ago)
Dead Air (61 months ago | reply)
So subtle, yet spooky.
redrumblefish added this photo to his favorites. (61 months ago)
Alice M (60 months ago | reply)
Don't you think he looks a bit like Bill Gates ?
ribena (60 months ago | reply)
I have some (strong, but diffuse) thoughts on this, but keep getting interrupted as I compose them. In the meantime, a question:
Is this not social intercourse? Not a (stupendous, global) flow of humanity?
I guess that's two questions, but one idea.
Marie Kelleher (60 months ago | reply)
Nice -- slightly mysterious.
(3:1 Group)
Lady Vervaine (60 months ago | reply)
Thank you all for the thoughtful responses - always appreciated :)
@vankufer: Thanks for the thoughts, and safe travels!
@Alice M: A very young (and much better-looking) Bill Gates if so!
@Sati: I think what you say is very possible - actually interacting with other people (especially people i like!) often leaves me feeling cheeful & outgoing; whereas a hard night in front of the computer often leaves me feeling a bit dazed, introverted & resentful of computers....
@ribena: I guess for me, it is & it isn't. Yes, there's a huge global flow of information, perspectives, and so on – but the simple fact is that it is being created by a lot of people who are all sitting on their own in front of computers – all alone. It's true that there can be a sense of connection in doing this – but how real is this connection? How meaningful? Sometimes – as in the case of you & Dubmill – it can turn into a real-world connection – but couldn't the fact that we find this amazing & wonderful in itself be some kind of evidence that withoutthe real-worldiness, it doesn't actually amount to very much, beyond another £15 for yahoo? I don't know – I'm still turning the questions over in my head.....
...meh... (60 months ago | reply)
The same questions loom large in my mind too... we're all inhabiting this electronic space that is flickr, interacting furiously, sharing thoughts, ideas, inspirations - yet simultaneously being, almost by definition, isolated and alone in front of our computer terminals.
The internet is in many ways an anonymising means of communication - people can be whoever they want to be, whether that's by and large who they are in 'real life', an artificial construct, or somewhere in between, expressing aspects of their persona that they might not have the skill or confidence to do in an offline setting. Sometimes that might be for the good, other times I'm much less convinced... see some of the vituperative discussions in flickr's own forums for examples - someone commented in one of the threads discussing the recent filtering decision that were it to be being enacted with all the participants in a room, there would most likely be a fight. I think they were right, and it made me sad. Besides which, if people are pretending, interacting from within an artificial construct when they're online, where's the trust - surely the basis of any worthwhile relationship? More to the point, how do you gain trust if you have no way of knowing what's real and what's fantasy?
It's not just the internet that has the potential to isolate us, either. Mobile phones can have the same effect to - ironic, given that their function is to enable always-on connection. I know that, when travelling alone, I have used my mobile as a kind of crutch to connect me to the familiar and safe, by texting friends at home, rather than interacting with the strangers around me. Not always, but I'm sure I'm not the only one.
There's a specific British perspective to the S&S piece, though I suspect it applies more broadly. The domainant entertainment perspective was, until fairly recently, one of four TV channels, films at the local cinema, one theatre... leading to a community-shared entertainment experience, where most people watched the same show, and could talk about it the next day. With the plethora of opportunities, many user-controlled, now available, that collective is much less common - only, perhaps at times of national endeavour (football world-cups, etc, if you buy into them).
The whole notion of customer/user-centeredness and control worries me too. I don't want to have to choose which hospital to attend, or which school to send my child... I just want the local one to be good. In a world where everything appears to be defined by the 'I', where is the 'we'? Maybe it doesn't matter... but it sure as hell worries me.
I guess I really don't have any answers, just a queasy feeling that we're moving further apart, despite the technological web that appears to bind us closer together.
But then again, I'm probably just a pessimist :)
Alice M (60 months ago | reply)
I don't quite understand the distinction between "real life" and "internet life", because they both feel real to me.
There are two words in English : "alone" (the "objective" adjective) and "loneliness" (the feeling of being alone, the "subjective" adjective). At least that's how I feel and understand the words.
You can feel lonely in front of your computer, amidst the crowd, or on a bus, as lady V. shows it beautifully.
Sometimes I find that the screen can be much more opaque in front of someone, at the restaurant, or drinking a coffee. The computer screen, sometimes, gets poetic, lively, surprising, and beautiful ! both experiences are real, so very real ! sometimes there is no screen at all, just air, fresh air, warm air, scented air, sometimes there are just extraordinary pixelized lives, sometimes there is just good company.
casually, krystina (60 months ago | reply)
So good to see a more in-depth discussion! - we had something similar in on one of my groups, when one of the contacts suddenly disappeared and with him all of his photos - this got several people a bit depressed and there was much talk about how superficial this cyber community was. I'm copying what my thoughts were then here - a bit in support of Alice above.
"i would have thought that given that Mark is/was not alone in being able to put a lot of emotion into his images and also having had some meangingful exchanges with people here could be seen as undermining the assessment that this cyberspace is all superficiality. It is what it is, and what we make of it. In the real world out there there is also superficiality, and who hasn't lost friends that we were once close to? It is just a different way of having friendships - and we all know the limitations but also the possibilities -
i for one can say, this community here is also real and it means a lot to me, and it doesn't matter that i won't be able to ask for your support when i'm ill or if my computer breaks down - for that i have other friends.....
flickr - a glass half full or half empty?
It was good to read your thoughts on such matters - and there are times when i too think it's all smoke in the air...but then, somebody says something and i go around with my mouth turned upwards on both sides for hours on end - we are a visual thought community, not a physical one - i think there's room for everything - the art of living is always to do with finding a balance between things somehow.
Krystina
Lady Vervaine (60 months ago | reply)
Thank you all for taking the time to think about this posting - I'm so glad this question engages other people too :))
I share a lot of Martin's feelings on this, especially that brilliant line: "In a world where everything appears to be defined by the 'I', where is the 'we'?" That sense of the collective is something that I'm increasingly missing - perhaps partly because I work from home, and largely in my own head - but I know I'm not alone in missing it. And I have a growing sense that while new technologies often promise a widening of human experience - and certainly can deliver something like that, at least some of the time - they paradoxically often also lead to some kind of narrowing.
Not that I haven't thrown myself headlong into them! Undoubtedly, I love my Flickr-friends; this place has at times been a surrogate community for me.... I've often felt more excited to talk to people here than in my real life; more moved or stimulated to read an online posting than anything my real world friends might've emailed me, or the messages they've left me on the answerphone.... So, like Alice M, I've definitely existed as powerfully in this virtual world as much as in the 'real'.... And yet: that nagging feeling: it's not real. And then there's the extent to which virtual friendships are contingent on full participation - is it really something any of us can count on, in the way we can count on people we know in our everyday lives?
And the internet is just one of these technologies; one of the reasons I liked Mike Atkinson's article was the way he drew many of them together.... So the guy in my photograph is lost in iPod-land, another place I spend much time, especially when I'm on public transport. I'm not saying that before portable music players, he would've been chatting with the person next to him, perhaps making connections & learning things he could never learn otherwise - but the possibility was there, and it sometimes happened. I remember it happening. Plug yourself into your iPod, and it's not there, can't be, by definiton....
I think finally Krystina's conclusion is very true & apt: "the art of living is always to do with finding a balance between things somehow". I'm not sure I've found that balance yet; I'm not sure how many people think they have; but I'm pretty sure it's a tricky thing to do, something that needs constant attention, and something that will demand our attention more & more as we go further into these realms....
Alice M (60 months ago | reply)
Lady, thanks for answering !
You say we may not necessarily "count" on "virtual" friends in the same way that we can "count" on people in "real" life. But can we always count on people ? aren't we never disappointed ? of course, it's easier to disappear from someone's life when on line, but maybe it's precisely because there are no obligations at all when you are on line, that you are bound to be more sincere (IMHO).
Your argument about being lost in "ipod land" is very relevant, but YES, the possibility of chatting is STILL there : the ipod hasn't got a life itself of its own volition, the ipod is a *tool* and the way we use it is the most important aspect to reflect upon. I once faced an old woman in the métro. I was plugged into my ipod, but I could see she felt uneasy. I instantly unplugged. She asked me what the time was, then she confessed she was lost, and did not know if she was on the right line to go where she wanted to go. We started a conversation, quite a deep one, about being lost in the maze of modern life, she said the older she got, the more acute this feeling was for her. You can always unplug yourself, any time, and then any conversation, any bunch of words are possible, the words are still there as possible gifts, and so are smiles, looks, gestures... ipods, computers, technology in general are just *tools*, it's up to us to use them the best way we can : they may be brilliant tools when used brilliantly !
{ kali_lab } added this photo to their favorites. (47 months ago)
Tomb Land (45 months ago | reply)
what a brilliant image, leading to an interesting discussion. i couldn't agree more with Mike Atkinson, and have been thinking about this a lot recently. but, there's a strong argument for what Alice M is saying too. great stuff.
Tomb Land added this photo to his favorites. (45 months ago)