I find the following notion both interesting and disheartening: all we know through the media, we only think we know. Most of my knowledge acquired as a man of the 21st century A.D. comes to me through thin wires and large satellites from hundreds, thousands, even million miles away.
The Internet is a tool, which I use everyday to work, play, and communicate. The experiences I have online are, however, fictive. They exist as second hand experiences, stories told to me from people far away, from people that I will most likely never meet.
This information comes to me, not directly, but through a filter that we label as the media. Information disseminated from privet organizations, snap shots of hellish war zones, messages from my government have been screened and packaged for my eyes and ears. They have been tweaked and modified to better represent what I should hear, what they want me to hear. Through “them” this information becomes distorted, and my understanding becomes clouded.
It upsets me to realize that I truly only know a fraction of what I think I know. My personal experiences are the only things I can draw upon that have not been filtered or altered; they are my own visions and snapshots of life and no one else’s, however they only account for a small fraction of my knowledge.
Klosterman talks about this concept in his essay, Fail, when he points to the manifesto written by the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. “We are living in a manner that is unnatural,” says Kaczynski. “We are latently enslaved by our own ingenuity, and we have unknowingly constructed a simulated world.”
He might have been crazy, but he had a point. He goes on to say, “they [media outlets] do not compensate for the overall loss of humanity that is its inevitable consequence. As a species, we have never been less human than we are right now.”
I can’t say I agree with all that Kaczynski and Klosterman say. I believe that technology, like most things, is a mixed bag. We can use it to create or solve problems, including those caused by the technology itself. Media technology is an especially mixed bag. Every device invented proliferates media content, while impeding our ability to keep our attention on just one thing. Klosterman and Kaczynski take this one step further by saying that the information conveyed by the devices is false in some way, because it is second hand.
I agree with this. I believe that when you trust someone to disseminate information to you, you trust them to tell the truth. The problem is that people seldom tell the whole truth and nothing but.
"I believe that technology, like most things, is a mixed bag."
ReplyDeleteKlosterman agrees when he says "Good teachnology can't be separated from bad technology." But what should our attitude (and actions) then be?
I honestly believe that they cannot be separated and that technology, as a whole, is then a detriment to humanity. Yes, there are myriad examples I can think of to illustrate positive effects of technology, but none that I think I wouldn't give up to erase the bad effects.
ReplyDeleteMedicine: Yes, it helps us live longer, but technology, like the pollution from factories or the radiation from cell phones also causes cancer. Plus many people believe there are cures and remedies for everything that can be found in nature, and not synthetically in labs, if you know where to look.
Communication: Yes, having a cell phone to call someone in an emergency is always a good thing, but without technology being the source of most emergencies, such as a car accident, how often would you need to call someone for help? If you get mauled by a bear in the woods, well... I guess that's just survival of the fittest.
I mean, obviously I'm being somewhat tongue in cheek and everyone can think of circumstances in which technology simply is beneficial, but I think on the whole, because you can't have the good without the bad, I would rather go without than have it all. The only problem is that I'll only go without if you all will follow me, because while living in the woods and working my own land to survive appeals to me, doing it alone does not. We are social creatures. We can also fulfill our social needs without the aid of technology.