When I was growing up, having a pen pal on the other side of the globe was a big thing. It was an early, primitive form of global interconnectivity and many children delighted in communicating with someone so far away. Pen pals satisfied an urge to reach way out there. In those days it wasn't about how many pen pals you had, it was about where they were. Where doesn't matter anymore when here is everywhere or everywhere is here.
So many congenital sociological and biological impulses have been tweaked and distorted by the surge of technology, not least the desire to make contact with others. We no longer reach out to a handful of people, we reach out to a network, and the people we reach can be counted in the hundreds or even thousands if we so wish. We're all encouraged to fashion a version of ourselves, and offer it to the world. (...)
Where is it all going? Even with climate change we still have many decades, possibly centuries left to go. What will we become? Will there be a backlash, a mass closing of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts? Will we all retreat within ourselves, becoming postmodern Thoreaus, seeking safety in solitude, not in numbers? Will we reach in, instead of out? Will we lean out, instead of in? Will history once again prove itself to be a pendulum that swings back and forth between two extremes?
by Brooks Riley, 3 Quarks Daily | Read more:
Image: Lemmings, uncredited
[ed. Easy. Start your own blog.]
[ed. Easy. Start your own blog.]
