ha ha ha… all very amusing…
When I was growing up there were two books that provided alternative views of what the future might look like.
One was 1984, by George Orwell, a totalitarian view of a world run by a crushing dictatorship that used technology to keep careful tabs on everyone and everything they did.
The other was Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. In his vision of the future, we turned into an idiot culture, consumed only by the desire to consume more and be endlessly entertained.
Huxley wins.
I understand Obama’s need to go on The View and chit chat during daytime TV. And I don’t think it’s the end of the world.
But I do think it’s yet another harbinger of the kind of culture and society we are creating. And that creation isn’t driven by Obama or anyone else. They are all but respondents to the inevitable consequences of technology’s impact on culture.
In this case, the technology in question is screens.
We live in Screenworld.
We spend 8.5 hours a day staring at screens, and that number is only going to increase.
And as we stare at screens, the way that we see the world changes – rather radically.
Gail Collins in today’s NY Times comments on the impact that ‘reality stars’ have on politics.
In his pre-presidency, Obama made a guest appearance on the wrestling show “Raw†during the 2008 primaries and mimicked one of the stars, Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson. Like everybody in the pseudosport, Johnson was part of a scripted soap opera in which he played a wrestler named Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson. Among the other characters were the philandering league owner, Vince McMahon, played by owner Vince McMahon, and his long-suffering wife, Linda.
Linda McMahon is now running for the United States Senate. Dwayne Johnson is an actor who recently starred as the tooth fairy. Really.
And, of course, Barack Obama became president and appeared this week on “The View.†There, he denied knowing the identity of Snooki, who plays a woman named Snooki on “Jersey Shore,†where she recently criticized his revenue sources for health care reform.
Compared to this, “Inception†is a simple tale of people who enjoy napping.
Because fiction and fact both come to us through the same screen, we increasingly have difficulty separating the two. And worse, perahsp in the end it does not matter what is ‘real’ and what is not, so long as we continue to live in Screenworld.
The technology of fiction is so good now that it surpasses reality. And that too is only going to get better.
Zack Wilson, who works with us, sent me the link to HBO’s The Making of John Adams
Note the power of CGI. As the technician says, ‘I defy anyone to tell me what is real and what is CGI’
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRX7o0DZc34[/youtube]OK.
Let’s project these three trends out a bit:
A country that gathers all its information from screens.
A technology that allows you to create pretty much anything you want on screens.
An increasing inability to differentiate entertainment from reality (even the term ‘reality’ connotes fraud now).
What kind of a world are we heading for?
One which is vastly entertaining, yet not real.
Why not start to blend CGI into politics? Into news?
I am sure this will come.
And I am equally sure it will be great entertainment and very popular.
*all credit to Neil Postman for his seminal work
