My blog today is about something I encountered frequently on my recent vacation - rabid, photo-snapping tourists. I was reminded of an article I read by Cliff Bostock in Creative Loafing (back when it used to come out on paper in Atlanta without all of the interesting contents eviscerated); his article speculated about the effect that increasing access to technology has on the human brain and consciousness. He had two conclusions, both of which I essentially agree with. The first was that opening the door to overwhelming information overload is compressing our attention spans. How many of us have the patience to finish a book or other long-term project? Most people in the age of the internet and smart technology would prefer to hours clicking from page to page, updating our statuses and keeping current with our lolcats.
His second conclusion, the one which speaks more directly to my vacation experience, is a growing need in all of us to document our lives. Facebook is the epitome of this phenomenon. People get lost in there. I have more than a few friends (I think all of us know these people, and to a certain extent manifest these tendencies ourselves) that must update their facebook status to reflect every mundane activity of their day, people that have to take photos of everything and share them with everybody. It's an interesting expression of an underlying collectivist tendency in us; we feel that absent documentation and validation from the collective (the synthetic facebook meta-consciousness), our experiences are less valid or important. Perhaps we don't feel this in explicit terms, but I think that's what motivates many of us within. People don't want to admit it, but their more concerned with being congratulated or commented upon for doing something exciting or significant than with whatever immediate impact that exciting, significant event should be having on them.
Meta- is the prefix that sums it all up. We are slowly receding to a point of rejecting all interactions with the world not mediated by technology. We're taking a step back. We're trading in the imperfect, incomplete, but ultimately real human experience for an immaculate facsimile.
On that note, I'd like to share with you my two favorite photos from my own vacataion:
How is taking pictures and then inviting your friends over to watch your slide show with your projector different from posting them to facebook and discussing them online?
ReplyDeletequalitatively I don't think it's any different. But there is an important quantitative difference - with digital cameras you can take hundreds of photos, there's no functional limit. Same with uploading to facebook. Since people aren't confronted with the logistical limitations of film cameras, they can theoretically take and share an enormous number of pictures, and usually do. I just don't like the idea of becoming more obsessed with documenting experience than experiencing it.
ReplyDeleteI tried to read what you wrote but quickly lost attention. So I skipped to the pics.
ReplyDeleteMy how phallic those are.... they seem to have marked an _interesting_ vacation.