So now there’s a TV show called, “Are you smarter than a fifth-grader?” I’m glad people find our current ‘dumbing-down’ humorous. More accurately it should probably be called ‘dumbing-up’ since it doesn’t imply cultural backwardness. On the contrary technology seems to be the cause of the new ignorance. With so many machines to do so much of your thinking for you, why bother doing it yourself? Though statistics and percentages seem rather out of place when discussing degrees and states of consciousness, still it seems reasonable to see the brain as a muscle like any other, subject to atrophy with disuse. The greatest invention of the last century, the computer, has been reduced to R & R hero-worshippers getting their thrills being virtual friends with each other on MySpace, FaceBook, and others, saying brilliant things like, “Thanks for the add, man,” as though it’s only logical that someone’s sense of self-esteem would be dependent upon acceptance into a club open to anyone. Mostly it’s just harmless juvenile buddy stuff I figure, and beneficial in that some isolated alienated teenage potential artist/intellectual growing up in, oh I don’t know, say Bumfug, Mississippi, can find friends with common interests in other places that he’s having trouble finding at home. The only disturbing thing is that that kid may very well be in a highly diverse place like Berkeley, CA, with poorly developed social skills as a result of having adopted the computer as a surrogate friend and the Internet as a way of life instead of having normal relationships with normal people, real live girls in particular. As a tool the computer is incredible, as is Internet as a central database bringing together every sort of information from every conceivable source in one common space and format, available to random access in real time. It’s only as an end in itself, a way of life, that it all begins to look trivial and absurd and downright dangerous. But if it’ll make more people more content with a more compartmentalized life and save the vast Nature scenes for me, then it’ll all work out fine I guess. Don’t fence ME in.
The best part about the new social Internet is the expansion of democracy implied and intended, mostly in the fields of entertainment but also in politics. It’s certainly not inappropriate for YouTube to sponsor a presidential debate- though I’m sick and tired of seeing stupid video clips take over spaces formerly given to text- and it’s not inconceivable that ‘Internet revolution’ could at some point as easily refer to a revolution by Internet as one of Internet. Mostly though the most discernible impact is in the field of entertainment, whether good or bad it’s too early to tell. The recording industry is in a shambles. Is that bad? They’ve been in bed so long with the film industry that it’s hard to tell whether you’re watching a music video or a film trailer. That was when there were music videos, now mostly displaced by filler and fluff. So now they try to play FTSE with the fashion industry, as though we’re all just dying to see what Fergie and Will I. Am are going to be wearing at the Grammys. Three years ago Black-Eyed Peas were playing street fairs; now they’re waiting in line to host game shows, after having issued state of the union addresses from Moscow to Beijing. This is obviously the degenerate mop-up phase of urban music, long after ‘old school’, ‘new school’, and ‘classic phase’. Should I get some vicarious thrill at seeing self-proclaimed fashionistas wearing Calvin K.’s with their guys in penguin suits? These are the ‘alternative’ musicians, for God’s sake, preening and posing like Britney and Christina and Justin. I’m glad P. Diddy and Jay Z have as much money as Elton and Mick and God in less than half the time while espousing street values and ghetto revenge, but what happened to the music? That’s what you go to MySpace for. Everybody’s equal there. The Beatles stand right next to Townes Van Zandt right next to muddy Waters right next to the garage band down the street. You’re only as good as your stuff. YouTube’s doing the same with film and video. Want to finally see that Kenneth Anger film that you studied back in film school? It’s there, with Stan Brakhage, Jean Cocteau, and all the others, all for free. The written word, both literature and journalism, might be next, if anybody really cares. Neither of us, you or me, would be right here right now otherwise.
The bad thing about the continuing saga of ‘Net-head’ life is that social gaps in the world are getting wider and wider and some people, the vast numeric majority, are being left further and further behind. Less than twenty years ago I was sending and receiving telegrams, telegrams!, to and from Mexican towns that maybe had only one community phone. Wonder why cell phones have done so well in the third world? Creeping consumerism, maybe? How about no phone at all otherwise? Welcome to Cambodia. As advanced countries move into computer-based music formats such as MP3 and such, cassettes continue to sell well in Thailand, hardly the most backward country in the world, typically occupying about half the typical music store. Good luck finding a music store at all in Mali. Cassette vendors wheel their product through the streets on push-carts with the help of a car battery to blare their wares. The main division between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ in the world is still two-dimensional- the gap between rural and urban gradually replacing the gap between rich and poor countries- but more and more the gap is becoming three-dimensionally vertical- one of access to technology and psychological conformity to the emerging international culture it promotes. This increasingly means intercommunication in fewer languages, with English far in the lead. On the other hand it also allows inter-communication among widely scattered but massively numerous communities of Spanish, French, Arabic, Chinese, Portuguese, Malay, Quechua, Turkic, Swahili, and Slavic speakers, to the extent that they wish to do so. The first five certainly have and do. Whether the less typically ‘colonial’ and more typically ‘minority’ languages will take advantage of new technology to unite and strengthen their cultures remains to be seen. It will be hard if they have little or no access to the new technology.
‘Reality TV?’ Hand me a barf bag and an old-fashioned sitcom. The only ‘Reality TV’ I’ve ever seen that I liked was in Dublin about five years ago when I wasn’t even sure what reality TV was. Baile Atha Cliath? No wonder Gaelic is a dying language, and calling it ‘Irish’ doesn’t help. On screen were on-going scenes of a family, a real family, under constant surveillance. Tired of watching the teenage daughter sleep? Wait a few hours until she wakes up. Want some company while you clean house? Wait until Dad leaves for work, all on cable TV from the privacy of my hotel room, like ‘The Truman Show’, but real and without artificial plot points imposed, Reality, slow boring and infinite. For a spicier reality, I’ll take world music? I can’t get enough. What’s the bottom line on the intellectual future of the species? There is none. My Thai in-laws can’t use an ATM, log on to the ‘Net’, or even program a digital alarm clock. My wife’s son can, but can’t multiply up to the 10’s nor score above a ‘0’ in Chinese class no matter how slanted his eyes, and cheats his homework with impunity. A downtown bar girl can communicate with smile and innuendo where she leaves off with grunts and groans, but couldn’t find the countries she’s visited with her faan on a map, nor likely even know what continent they’re part of. Words fail and concepts fall short. Theories of relativity only go so far. Some things you just can’t plot on a graph or pie-chart. Is it a brave new world or a new world order or just same ol’ same ol’. You tell me.
