Watched this video last night. It reminded me of the piece I copied in blog below from an article in The New Yorker about the Never-Betters, Better-Nevers, and Ever-Wasers. Essentially a lot is written on the web’s impact on us as humans - the supposed emotional, human cost of online living. Will Self covers all three perspectives here in this interview for an upcoming Opera by the ENO, that actually covers these very issues. While all three angles ring true, and make sense, I’m especially cautious of wary nay-sayers who talk about isolated, fragmented identities unable to think or feel like people of the past etc etc. My reason for skepticism here is not so much that this is always a condition of modernity, but that no-one is asking the kids, the youth, those around the world if this is what they feeling - rather this is Western intellectuals comparing it with a romanticised version of their own privileged youth. I’ve recently spent a bit of time in South Africa and the role that online is playing amongst what had been a socially fragmented youth in Johannesburg seems in stark contrast to the bleak, barren, post-human landscapes painted by Self, Carr, Greenfield etc etc. As it was with young football fans in London, for whom the internet gave them much richer, sympathetic view of the world and humanity at large. In no way am I techno-utopian, I just want to see some evidence of this drive to isolation, I want to hear it from those who are supposedly having their humanity colonised google, twitter, facebook etc - do they feel fragmented, unable to feel or think, or do they feel connected, empowered and more aware of their humanity at large. From the young I have spoken to, I’m always refreshingly surprised that is more the latter.
GIVE ME A GUN AND I WILL MAKE ALL BUILDINGS MOVE
This is a collection of my thoughts, things that interest me and things I do. The title is borrowed from Bruno Latour - a device to see the complex networks of things at play in our world, even things that seem inanimate, like buildings. **Disclaimer** - these are my own thoughts and do not necessarily represent the thoughts of my employer
