“I’m all lost in the supermarket…”
The Clash
In the beginning there was conversation, musings, the exchange of local words. A good story might be gathered in the morning and roasted at fireside talks over many evenings.
Words could be risky, we learned, but also nutritious, mind-blowing, and profitable. So people made petroglyphs, cuneiform clay tablets, papyrus scrolls, telegraph cables, CB radios, and personal computers. Then with smart phones and other devices we could click around the digital hive, quaff quick messages and targeted ads, tell friends which memes we like most.
Thus there was no real morning and there was no real evening, just one virtual day. Users looked at all the new apps and links and said “eew!” or “whatev” or “kewl”.
Alpha text-slingers inform me that “kewl” is no longer cool, btw. “Lol” now means “little old lady”. Funny is “ha!,” funnier is “haha!,” very funny is “hahaha!.” Nothing in this wide world is “hahahaha!,” according to in-the-know dudes.
So what’s the next big code in human communication? What new nerd cereal will feed our collective chatter, once Facebook is as memorable as Myspace, and Twitter becomes a pile of binary bird-bones?
For help in answering these questions I went to Rabbi Bob (Bob Goldberg), one of the nerdiest nerds I know. He’s very enthusiastic about electronic gadgets, possibly because of childhood exposure to Crazy Eddie commercials. He also exudes a primal passion for folk culture, as demonstrated by his programming on KMUN.
Bob’s geeky grassroots ethos made him a great guy to help re-launch the Upper Left Edge. Many local residents loved the little monthly paper connecting writers and readers with our coast community. We’ve revived upperleftedge.com as a website for homegrown conversation, a place to re-root social media in the local muse.
Much of today’s online experience feels like fast food. Throughout the virtual day people screen messages at drive-through windows, big websites sponsored by big corporate chains that want us to think like big chain consumers. Public discourse is reduced to a kind of endless speed dating. We don’t pause to get to know what’s inside the packaging. No time-outs from the popularity contest to explore who we really are.
Hopefully we’re at the same tipping point with media that we were with farmers markets a few years ago. When localized, the web enables writers and readers to engage in direct exchange. It compliments our real interactions, helps us share gifts of creative produce with the village.
The ineffable “aha!” comes when I bite into a tasty comment following a fresh local post. Makes me hungry for more.
– This post also appears in the Spring 2014 edition of The Current, a quarterly publication of KMUN.
Watt: well you “had” me right at the beginning with that quote from “The Clash,” haha.
I’ve been developing websites and software and doing online marketing (as my mainstay) for 18 years, now. I started out when the first widely-used browsers capable of rendering the web in a visual/graphic manner were launched. I knew at that time that the thing was going to take off as a huge marketing/communications platform and that I was witnessing the birth of something HUGE. That’s why I leapt at the chance to learn web development in 1996.
But, the internet is just a tool…a means to an end. For me it’s become a very useful way to make a living wherever I go. And I’m grateful for this tool as much as I’m grateful for a great paintbrush or the right garden spade but it’s not the only tool.
I’ve also been very clear about the finite nature of popular technologies…the web is no different. One kill-shot solar flare, EMP warhead or large natural disaster and we will all find ourselves rocketed back to a simpler time for hours or days. There will be no internet or technology gee-gaws after the batteries run down and the generator gas runs out.
I see so many people who are so jazzed up their latest electronic gadgets just because they are, well, new and cool. Technology used just for the sake of technology (endlessly texting, talking on the cell phone, computer games, tweeting, posting, pining, vlogging and taking it with you everywhere, 24/7, now that is something else. Call it the beginning of trans-humanism or call it addiction or call it distraction, technology is no longer a useful tool in this case. The end-user humans are the “tools” being used by the large for-profit corporate entities via the internet gadgets and distractions.
How this is all shaping our cultural and social norms and the way we interact with others is obvious in some ways and yet to play out fully in others.
As for me, sure, I develop amazing websites and am an online marketing wizard. I’m also the one with the “dumb phone” that I frequently forget to turn on and certainly don’t carry around everywhere with me. Don’t text message me, I won’t respond. I’m getting back to using pen and brush and ink and paint to design and draw, whenever possible, instead of running to the computer to create everything. I’m actively pursuing other ways to sustain myself and developing my non-electronically-based skills and talents. It feels like I’m preparing for the next phase of social and technological change; a shift back to being fully present, here and now.
Solar flares and EMP pulses aside, I predict that the decline and demise of the internet as we know it is more likely to be a gradual fizzling out until only the more practical aspects linger on as useful tools. It might take a decade or more to phase out. Or it could happen overnight.
Then who knows, Watt, we may all be brushing up on our oral story-telling skills then. Why not start now? I hear it’s the newest cool communications trend, or so I’ve heard.
Morning Dawn!
I was feeling starved for company in the dark hours, wrestling with doubts about my work. While preparing a new post I noticed your comment was pending. Suddenly I felt like I was sitting before a great feast, the perfect compliment to our conversation at the grocery store.
The sky is beginning to brighten now, thanks to your beautiful gift of words.
Ahh, and now I see all the editing I still needed to do in my comment… Oh well.
See, we all wrestle with ‘dem doubts.