Why the Internet is Not Ruining Everything

Last Thursday, the Times online published an article called "The Internet is killing storytelling." The author, Ben Macintyre argues,

The internet has evolved a new species of magpie reader, gathering bright little buttons of knowledge, before hopping on to the next shiny thing...

If the culprit is obvious, so is the primary victim of this radically reduced attention span: the narrative, the long-form story, the tale. Like some endangered species, the story now needs defending from the threat of extinction in a radically changed and inhospitable digital environment.

Macintyre's arguments do not ring true to me for several reasons.

First, he is unable to prove that email, texting, twittering, blogging, etc cannot exist side-by-side with more traditional forms of story-telling. In this very article, Macintyre claims that America's rapt attention to the Obama narrative this past fall indicates our "hunger for narrative." One could just as easily argue that our ability to sustain interest in Obama's life story indicates that narrative story-telling is alive and well.

Second, a story does not have to be long to be a good story. I really didn't like how Macintyre was really criticizing damage to the long narrative, but did not make that distinction consistently in his article. One might argue that our attention span has shrunk to a ridiculously short amount, making even the most simple narrative impossible to digest, but hour long dramas on television would beg to differ. Perhaps television or a four page email from Mom, isn't what Macintyre has in mind, but it reeks of snobbery to pretend that something has to be printed and the length of Moby Dick to qualify as a narrative.

Third, even if we presume that narrative story telling is in trouble, I don't think that there is good evidence at all that the internet is the source of damage to the long narrative. In Claude Fisher's book, America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940, Fisher argues "telephone company management shifted advertising during the 1920's to reflect the demands of the private consumer. Prior to this shift, managers marketed the telephone as a practical, rather than social, tool. Once they realized more Americans were buying automobiles instead of telephones, the telephone companies changed their marketing strategies to reflect the predominant use of their product."

Consumers drive how content is developed and marketed. If internet technology is used to break communication down into smaller and smaller pieces, I don't think the technology that enables this is to blame. A better culprit would be societal forces that demand that people spend less and less time communicating and more and more time working or consuming.

Also, it's a little weird that a newspaper article is criticizing the loss of a long-form narrative. Pot calling kettle black, dude?

I think I may have to divorce the internet. I'm not sure what that's going to mean for my blog though. I'd like to keep writing here and reading other blogs, but I have to say, everyday I encounter things that really upset me on the internet. And I don't mean upset me in the sense that there are tons of depressing news items out there that convey information about an increasingly stressful and depressing world. I mean upset me like, I cannot believe you, my beloved blog, would say such a thing! (Which maybe just means I'm overly sensitive.)

I wanted to leave a comment about this at Jezebel today (I need to stop reading Jezebel if only because I think I've written three out of the last four posts about stuff I've encountered there), but I can't because I have this new policy that it's stupid to leave comments that criticize people for offending your personal sensibilities. It's like coming into someone's house and saying you don't like the wallpaper.

But you know me, silence isn't an option either.

Anyway, long preamble for this: Today Jezebel is following up on the news coverage that has recently gone on about facebook groups dedicated to women posting pictures of themselves drunk. A lot of blogs have written about this and mentioned how it's just a bunch of pearl clutching about how THOSE GIRLS SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF THEMSELVES, sometimes wrapped in the extremely thin (see-through) gauze of concern about binge drinking. Jezebel has written about this website in the past and invited readers to send in pics of drunk guys from facebook. It posted some of those today.

About two years ago, a friend of mine from high school got really drunk at a party. At some point in the night, his friends discovered him lying down outside at the foot of some stairs. Thinking he was passed out, they brought him inside and put him on the floor to sleep it off. Reportedly, his friends heard him snoring during the night. He had hit his head falling down and sometime during the night, he died.

That's why this picture really upset me.

I know that over at Jezebel their intention is to point out to the media that gee, it's not just girls who are getting drunk, taking pictures of themselves, and putting it up on the internet. And yeah, ok, it is kind of hilarious to have a friend smear whipped cream all over their faces while their passed out drunk and your tickling them with a feather (or whatever. I'm not that fond of writing "balls" on people's heads; it's played out).

Funny pictures on the internet (and those HOLY SHIT OUR DAUGHTERS GONE WILD new stories) aside, it's just hard for me to look at these pictures and not think, "But what if he really is dead?"

mindfulness

I have been feeling wishy-washy about my relationship to technology and that all came to a head tonight when I broke my cell phone by dropping it by accident.

The thing is, I've broken three cell phone in the past and each time I've been really upset at the thought of losing my cell phone, but besides feeling momentarily inconvenienced, I wasn't upset this time. Partly it's because circumstances are different now; I have a landline and I can get a pay-as-you-go cell phone for emergencies. Partly it's because I just don't want a cell phone anymore, for the same reason I've been having trouble with the internet lately.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with cell phones or the internet. In fact I think the internet in particular has brought a lot of amazing things into my life and does a lot of good. Lately, however, I've been really frustrated with aspects of the internet or maybe just how I use it.

I think I may use this kind of technology to spend less time alone with myself and my thoughts. When I am always reading about other people's opinions, I never really have time to form my own. It's the same with the cell phone. Instead of walking by myself and thinking or waiting and thinking, I can just call some one up and chat. There are good aspects to both of these things, of course, I stay informed (or get misinformed) with the internet and I reach out to my friends with my phone. But it seems like (and I don't think I'm alone in this) I am unable to use the internet or my cell phone in moderation or for the "right" reasons.

Besides stunting my ability to form my own opinion, I think the internet has had other negative effects on me. When I read blog comments or visit youtube and look at the comments, I inevitably end up angry or depressed. Some days, being on the internet can be like watching the failure of communication over and over again. I do not understand why strangers feel compelled to try to convince one another that the other person is wrong. I do not understand why I feel compelled to do this. I would not feel compelled to do this if someone on the bus started telling me about their conservative view points, so why do I feel the need to shove my viewpoint down someone else's throat on the internet?

I am not very good at wrapping things up, so I thought I would just end with a thought from Radiant Mind: Essential Buddhist Teachings and Texts. Jon Kabat-Zinn writes,

Where to start? Why not with your own mind? After all, it is the instrument through which all our thoughts and feelings, impulses and perceptions are translated into actions in teh world. When you stop outward activity for some time and practice being still, right there, in that moment, with that decision to sit, you are already breaking the flow of old karma and creating an entirely new and healthier karma. Herein lies the root of change, the turning point of a life lived.

I can't think, the TV is on

Lately I've been feeling way too wired into television and the internet. For me, it's akin to feeling full or even like a glutton after a huge (unhealthy) meal. I have several websites that I check multiple times a day throughout the day everyday. And now, with the fall television season starting up again, I've been spending a lot of time letting my eyes glaze over as I practically slump over on the couch in front of the t.v. I am one of those people who cannot watch tv and carrying on a conversation at the same time; I get completely engrossed in whatever is on. I guess it's all those bright and shiny colors flying by me at a fast rate.

I watched Heroes last season and I'm going to continue to watch it again.

Spoiler alert **if you haven't watched the first season of Heroes and want to stop reading now, even though I'm only going to talk about it in a general way**

Last season focused good battling the evil of "progress at any cost." The Company was willing to sacrifice the lives of most of the people in New York City in order to unite the country under Nathan, ushering in a new era of progress and prosperity. Because the cost of the Company's idea of progress was millions (thousands?) of deaths through a nuclear explosion (in New York City), I initially thought that the show was trying to say something about terrorism. But I think that there is something else there, namely I think the Company represented the ideas of Social Darwinism*, (the concept that the rule "survival of the fittest" applies in economic and social situations).

On an individual level it's easy to see that, Social Darwinism is ridiculous; it requires us to consider a man who had the happy accident to be born into a wealthy family morally superior or more deserving of his wealth than a man who was born into poverty (it also requires us to think that the man born into poverty deserves to be poor). But I think that Social Darwinism lives on in some of our business practices. More and more companies are turning to global outsourcing as a means of cutting expenses. It is cheaper to make products in foreign countries that have less strict (or no) environmental or labor regulations. Those cheap costs of production are then (somewhat) reflected in lower costs to the United States consumer.

How can it be fair to pay someone with the same skill sets as an American worker less money just because they are born in a foreign country? I know there are complicated reasons why less money is seen as acceptable in these cases, but is one of those reasons based on a Social Darwinian idea? That those who work hard enough, no matter where they start, can and will achieve wealth and therefore, people who are poor are poor because they did not work hard enough (and do not deserve equal treatment)?

If progress in this case is cheaper goods for American consumers then the cost might be companies must engage in unethical business practices. Are we asking ourselves if progress is worth the cost? I know they are in academia, but is this question being asked by business leaders? Is it being asked by consumers? How can consumers even ask if progress is worth the cost if they don't even know what the ethical costs are? Is it the consumers job to stay informed about global business practices of the companies they use? Or is it the government's job to prevent unethical global business practices to begin with?

I honestly do not know if global outsourcing has a net positive or negative effect on foreign countries. I have heard arguments from Americans on both sides. I would like to hear from the foreign workers as well, because I don't want to be Whitey McPriviledged spouting my opinion about what's best for other countries. I do think, however, there are clearly some costs to global outsourcing.

I'm leaving this entry the scattered mess it is. I don't really know enough about this stuff to be writing about it, and clearly I have more questions then answer. If anyone has any good books/links in regards to globalization that they'd like to share, please do.




*A note about Social Darwinism: the theory of evolution defines success by a species ability to adapt to a given situation; the ability to adapt is measured first by the number of offspring a species successfully raises to reproduce and secondly, the number of new species that spring from the original species. Social Darwinism, on the other hand, measures success in terms of wealth acquired and the idea of "progress and civilization." One of the reasons that Darwin's theory of evolution was so threatening at the time he wrote his books is because there is no "progress" in Darwin's evolution; there is no end goal, there is only randomness. In college I took a class called Origins of Contemporary Thought where Allan Megill argued that this was Darwin's real challenge to religion; a world that works without an end goal, without progressing, implies that there is no God.