This week I’ve read a couple of articles that discuss the ennui of the Internet age. The first is a Salonprofile of the hip New York writer Tao Lin, which features an excerpt from his book Shoplifting from American Apparel:
Sam woke around 3:30 p.m. and saw no emails from Sheila. He made a smoothie. He lay on his bed and stared at his computer screen … About an hour later it was dark outside. Sam ate cereal with soymilk. He put things on eBay then tried to guess the password to Sheila’s email account, not thinking he would be successful, and not being successful.
Daniel Roberts discusses Lin’s style of prose:
[The] term, “depression,” is a bit too clinical in this context. Where Lin is coming from, and what his readers share, is a sense of loneliness. The malaise is not specific to New York, of course, but it is typical of a certain ilk of detached 20-somethings across the country. The loneliness could be attributed to the Internet. Lin and his literary peers spend hours and hours online, and although doing so fosters a sense of connectedness, it is equally isolating. No matter how many fans or fellow writers Lin “meets” online, at the end of the day it’s still him, sitting at his laptop alone. Any moments of delight or engagement that the Internet prompts are separated by longer stretches of boredom, as implied by the title of a short story by Brandon Scott Gorrell, a member of Lin’s online literary gang. The story is called “Minimizing and Maximizing Mozilla Firefox Repeatedly.”
Meanwhile, the New York Review of Books blog discusses China’s One Child policy, and the detached scions it has produced:
The more he spoke, the more anguished he sounded about losing his son in other ways, too. Even as a youngster the boy would stay in his room glued to his computer avoiding human contact, rarely going out with his few friends. Other Chinese parents I spoke with said similar things about their children, complaining about their remoteness, their social isolation, and their obsession with technology. They seem an alien race of free-floating individuals.
Night lights Kyoto by my friend strangerpixel, whose images you should really check out on Flickr by clicking the image
At the Plain Blog About Politics, Jonathan Bernstein reminds us that, despite the oceans of political coverage that seems to saturate the media, many people do not take an active interest in politics outside of election time.
If you asked [my Father] to name a NASCAR driver he’d probably look at you as if you were nuts…but if you named some of them, he’d probably recognize the names. The idea is that lots and lots of people have about that level of knowledge about most of what happens in politics. It’s just background noise. We, the people who write and read political blogs, and watch debates, and pay attention to politics even in the off season –we’re the minority.
Bernstein is writing about US politics, discussing former Governors and presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, two people who I bet few in Britain would recognise. Nevertheless, Bernstein’s cautionary tale is pertinent in the UK too – At election time, I remember being amazed that the Leaders’ debates could increase Nick Clegg’s popularity ratings so substantially. How had so many people not heard of him, or see him perform? In my world, he was on TV all the time! Here’s Caitlin Moran on Twitter:
I’ve made a decision – I’m not going to find out who Justin Bieber is. He’s going to be the first “modern thing” I’m going to ignore.
This has stuck with me, because it was via this message that I discovered that a person called Justin Beiber existed. Whenever I have mentioned this to other people, they have, without exception, replied: “Who’s Justin Beiber?” which reassures me somewhat. If I am being culturally ignorant, then at least a lot of other people I know are too. There is a Facebook group called I bet I can find 1 million people who hate Justin Bieber. Perhaps I should start one called I bet I can find 1 million people who have never heard of Justin Bieber? That Bieber is, in many circles, a hugely famous global phenomenon – worthy of single-serving sites, mash-ups and parodies – matters little to me. The most cursory research quickly reveals that I am not his target market. In such cases, admitting ignorance becomes something of a badge of sophistication. However, in other cases, the sudden exposure of my own ignorance leaves me more concerned. It is more embarrassing for me to admit that I had barely any knowledge of Alan Watkins’ career, or the output of Tony Judt, until people I follow began tweeting and blogging their RIPs. As a fully paid up agent for the liberal left conspiracy, Watkins and Judt were guys I really, really should have known about before they died. Instead, both names were part of the ambient noise around me (like Bernstein Snr and the NASCAR drivers). I’m grateful that at least the news of their passing found its way into my ‘streams’, and I can now set about reading Postwar. Of course, knowing that there are influential people out there who you have not heard of is not very helpful, because of course, you don’t know who they are! This can be remedied by reading an entirely new or random blog, or just by picking up a weekly magazine that you might otherwise avoid. What might me more interesting, however, is considering who or what currently exists on the penumbra of your consciousness? The answer that springs to mind is Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, which I first became aware of when I began to see young teensm on trains reading improbably thick paperbacks. Meyer’s series managed to become a global success story while I remained oblivious. Again, this is easily explained by the fact that I am not the target market. However, now that movies are being made and advertised on the public transport system, I would say that the saga, with its emo-vampire chic, is part of most people’s peripheral vision now. It is no longer ‘background noise’ as Bernstein has it, but rather, a collective cultural happening that infiltrates our awareness via a kind of osmosis. I would say that there are a whole class of public figures – people like Simon Cowell, Cheryl Cole, Huw Edwards, and John Terry – who enter our thoughts this way. We know about them, and their notoriety before we even consider consuming their cultural oevres ourselves. Certain politicians fall into this category too. I would expect even the most uninterested and sullen of the lumpenproletariat to know who David Cameron was, and possibly George Osborne and Nick Clegg too. However, if they aren’t clear who David Willets or Danny Alexander are… well, I think that’s forgivable.
an online multiplayer game played out as you travel the city with your Oyster Card. By using Oyster data we are able to show you your Tube travel, and every journey means you amass points, taking a few steps further along the way to owning London. Chromaroma is a type of location-based top-trumps. You collect places, identities, modes of transport and passengers as you travel around the city; discover and investigate mysteries attached to different locations and build alliances with fellow passengers that share your journeys. It’s a game you can play on your own, or part of a team.
This sounds very much like a Foursquare-type version of the idea I described earlier, so I will contact the Mudlark collective to ask for more information. Hilariously, I am faced with the slightly awkward prospect of trying to express the depth of my interest, without giving the impression that I am in any way laying claim to the idea like John Turturro in Secret Window.
A fascinating link that has been doing the rounds recently is the Live London Tube Map by Matthew Somerville. The link is meant to be here, but at present (24/6/2010) it is not active… probably because so many people re-tweeted it and I guess it makes pretty heavy demands on the servers of Transport For London, who provide the raw location data. I know many people share a fascination for watching or listening to events and processes that happen in real-time. During the shuttle missions, I like to listen to the communications between the astronauts and Houston; ATC audio holds the same fascination, as does FlightRadar’s graphical representations of live air traffic around Europe. Chris Heathcote has created a page of TFL cams, showing live images from London’s roads; and subscribers to the Shoreditch Digital Bridge project are just as keen to watch each other via CCTV as they are to watch actual programmes. The appearance of Matt’s tube page inspires me to post a short concept for an urban game that I wrote a few years ago, uploaded to a wiki, and then failed to develop much further. It is reproduced below. I sense that Foursquare may actually perform many similar functions, though I haven’t used that platform yet. Either way, it would be great to get some input from people like those who run LiveFiction and Hide&Seek. Continue reading
Last week we learned that South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone have suffered death-threats on an Islamist site, after they attempted to depict the Prophet Mohammed in South Park. Contributors to site called Revolutionmuslim.com warned they might be killed, like the filmmaker Theo Van Gogh. The Revolutionmuslim site is now down, but their threats are cached by Google:
We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show. This is not a threat, but a warning of the reality of what will likely happen to them.
The post also contained a link to a Huffington Post article which describes where Stone and Parker live. The group later presented a ‘clarification’ on SlideShare, which is still live, and which repeats the threat:
As for the Islamic ruling on the situation, then this is clear. There is no difference of opinion from those with any degree of a reputation that the punishment is death. For one example, Ibn Taymiyyah the great scholar of Islam says, “Whoever curses the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) – a Muslim or a non Muslim- then he must be killed…” and this is the opinion of the general body of Islamic scholars. … This shows that taking this stance is virtually obligatory, but it does not mean that our taking this stance is in some way an absolute call toward the requirement that the creators of South Park must be killed, nor a deliberate attempt at incitement, it is only to declare the truth regardless of consequence and to offer an awareness in the mind of Westerners when they proceed forward with even more of the same.
Quite chilling. In the end, Mohammed was shown on South Park in a bear suit, and then underneath a big black ‘censored’ box, with references to his name bleeped out. Producers at Comedy Central made clear that it was they, and not Stone/Parker, that inserted this censorship. In the second of the two part episode, the man in the suit was revealed to be Father Christmas, not Mohammed. What is odd about all this is that, before the Mohammed cartoons controversy in Denmark, South Park quite happily featured Mohammed, unveiled, uncloaked, and unbearsuited. The episode freely circulates in repeats and on DVD, and can be viewed in this short Boing Boing interview with Parker and Stone:
This week, the saga took a strang twist, when cartoonist Molly Norris published and circulated a cartoon entitled ‘Everybody Draw Mohammed Day‘, highlighting the ridiculous outcome of the South Park situation, where drawing anything can be taboo if it is labelled ‘Mohammed’: The images and the idea were dedicated to Parker and Stone, but their heritage can be traced back clearly to the beginnings of conceptual art: René Magritte’s ‘The Treachery of Images‘ (“Ceci n’est pas une pipe”), perhaps? Norris ‘Citizens Against Citizens Against Humor’ label was quickly taken to be a real movement (it was not), and the ‘day’ assumed to be a proper publicity drive (which it wasn’t). Norris quickly removed her image, and made clear that she was not attempting to disrespect religion herself. This entire episode marks a continuation, rather than a departure, from the frustrating discourse around blasphemy and ‘offence’. Since the Rushdie affair, and especially since more recent examples such as the Theo Van Gogh murder, the ideal and right of free expression has been on the back foot. Matt Stone’s quote in the video above highlights the sorry state of affairs:
Now that’s the new normal. We lost. Something that was OK is now not OK.
When people like Stone and Parker do attempt to take this on, they are foiled by their own network. Cartoonists like Molly Norris back away from any controversy. In the UK, the recent production of Behud by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti reminds us that no-one is brave enough to put on Behzti, her controversial play set in a Sikh Temple. Even the board of the illustrious Index on Censorshipbacked away from publishing a Mohammed cartoon earlier this year. We are living in one of two worlds. Either
the fears of all these people are justified, in which case, we have actually descended into a sort of fascist dystopia; Or
we are being over-cautious, and self-censoring unnecessarily
My personal sense is that it is the latter state of affairs is where we are at. The Revolution Muslim group seem tiny, pathetic and are easily dealt with using existing laws against threatening behaviour. Likewise with other protesting groups in both the USA and the UK, who can be easily countered if free speech activists and artists co-ordinate properly. Moreover, public opinion is certainly with free speech, and against those who think that blasphemy is a legitimate reason to censor. Those with a personal connection to Theo Van Gogh, or Hitoshi Igarashi (Salman Rushdie’s Japanese translator) may disagree over the nature of the threat. Crucially, however, either situation is untenable and an assault on democracy, and cannot be allowed to stand. My feeling is that political leadership is required. Only political leaders can guarantee police and legal protection for those who push the boundaries of satire… and the companies that facilitate this. We don’t have this at the moment, and artists seem to be swimming in uncertainty, lost and scared.
