Stop Creating for a Moment and Enjoy? We’re Fine, Thanks

Haven't we been obsessively documenting since man was able to record events? I think this is just an extension of the need to preserve a memory. I love your take on the disconnect from live events while preserving the connection to our social sphere (she says as she's logged into facebook connect).

"Haven't we been obsessively documenting since man was able to record events?"

Sure, but what's changed is the immediacy of distribution and almost nonexistent barriers to self-publication. Whereas in the past I might have run home from something exciting to log an entry in my journal, tell my story to my friends or maybe (if I were a professional journalist) file a story for the next morning. We can say with quite a bit of certainty that many of the people in that picture uploaded photos that night, if not while they were still at the event. We're obviously living in an era of unprecedented access to tools (pocket size digital cameras, smart phones, etc) and low-cost forums for sharing information (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc). That impacts how we, as you say, preserve memories. It means that instead of the traditional rhythm of experiencing and then creating, we're often unable to resist the urge to experience and create at the same time. That's a beautiful thing.

What's going to be really interesting over the next few years is how the separation between experiencing and creating not only approaches zero, but also how the creating will happen without us having to necessarily take explicit action each time. For example, it's probably been weeks since I've logged into FriendFeed, but when I signed in today I saw that without me having engaged FriendFeed directly, it has been keeping a steady log of my activities across the web. I opted in to this, of course, but had put it in the back of mind. Especially as all websites move towards being more "social" and "location-aware," I am certain that as time goes on, we're going to be creating more and more data and content without really realizing it.

"Haven't we been obsessively documenting since man was able to record events?"

Sure, but what's changed is the immediacy of distribution and almost nonexistent barriers to self-publication. Whereas in the past I might have run home from something exciting to log an entry in my journal, tell my story to my friends or maybe (if I were a professional journalist) file a story for the next morning. We can say with quite a bit of certainty that many of the people in that picture uploaded photos that night, if not while they were still at the event. We're obviously living in an era of unprecedented access to tools (pocket size digital cameras, smart phones, etc) and low-cost forums for sharing information (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc). That impacts how we, as you say, preserve memories. It means that instead of the traditional rhythm of experiencing and then creating, we're often unable to resist the urge to experience and create at the same time. That's a beautiful thing.

I am skeptical. This is nothing new to me, but this topic interests me in a very broad sense, so I might as well throw my thoughts out there and hope they are coherent enough, if not cogent.

I can't help but find it interesting that "diginterconnectedness" was twittered out (pardon my ignorance of common language usage re: twitter) as yet another example of the recent mold where bloggers (for lack of a better term) attempt to define trends with some sort of cutesy buzzword. While useful at times, these words evolve so quickly, constantly vanishing and regenerating, and any "success" inherent in defining a trend via blogword seems at its heart to contain a morbid paradox, like stars which become supernovae burning red-hot with their only death notice and obituary all at once. Absurdly theatrical rhetoric aside: the point is that questions and answers are not lining up, are being provided in response to and for various feelings, in a way that may distract from caring which question we originally asked. Not that this is anything new. Lest I digress more ridiculously than I am wont to do, the point is this: Diginterconnectedness, to me, connotes an element of dystopic irony, a warning that we might not end up getting what we want out of this, and someday find that while social media was created and driven by a fundamental desire and longing for connection...it left that behind at some point in the past. So what? (bear with me, this sort of creation/grandeur delusion pretty much comes along with the Internet territory, so if I am way off or no one cares or I am just making this up, I apologize for getting caught up in said creation which is a topic for another day entirely)

The intent of this social media is simple, yet impossibly complex. Connect. To me, this intention is where it also fails. Why? Ridiculous sweeping intention. Progress paradox and all that. We now realize the problem a lot faster.....if we can see if at all through the ad deluge and the sheer difficulty inherent in constructing meaning, when given more options? A "successful" social media to me is one that distracts people from their core loneliness. If people see the loneliness through the social media...it seems they quit. Find another way. One that doesn't throw sheer numbers in your face and make you feel like Connection is everywhere else except within. Which I don't know, perhaps it is, but I'm guessing those users of various facebook apps like "which one of my friends is hottest!", while enjoying for a bit, eventually need more, and more, and more, until to paraphrase Buddy Wakefield they realize that we've been killing off the best parts of ourselves, and claiming that we could read people's skin.

Jarred's comment about how we'll unknowingly create more data and content without really realizing it is true on many levels, and upon thinking about it I think my point, if there is one, is this: The more data and content we create, the more noise. We keep finding more noise, more noise, more noise everywhere. White noise. And while I may recommend the novel so titled "White Noise", it along with most so-called postmodern art tends to ring through the noise of social media:

CLIFF NOTES:
Human Condition.
Loneliness. We seek to alleviate loneliness. Each of us differs, but universally we must long for Connection.
Social media tends to create noise, without much answer. This is inherent, I think.
Once we can't see through the noise...it's going to hurt. For a lot of people, and the worst part being that they won't even know why.
Distractions are good...but only if we know at some level they are distractions. Otherwise, I think we're heading down a sad path on this Internet.

Discuss??!
Thoughts?
Complaints about my epic attempt at "comment" are also received for future notice :)

also P.S. w/r/t the change of rhythm in creating/experiencing which Taylor mentioned, I think that for a lot of people, neither creating nor experiencing is worth much of a shit to begin with so the combination just clutters it up for those who have always been experiencing and creating the whole way through...example being you telling your story to your friends. For people who wouldn't HAVE the story to tell after experiencing it...the Internet just invites them to clutter, confuse, be confused, and essentially yell while you attempt to tell your friends the story IRL(ha). And sometime there comes a point when they stop listening to the story, and start listening to the sad screamer, and think "maybe I should scream too?" Or physically remove said screamer, which is way more fun in real life.
In the end, the Internet changes none of the fundamental qualities of life...it just obfuscates them with noise, static. Attempt at epic parable offering internet glory through words, albeit math-ish as I am a math: The Internet allows us to search through many really, really, big Finite Numbers(capitalized for weight/effect, as is my tendency) for anything. As long as it is within those Finite things, that is. Infinity and The Infinite is still out there, still understahdable in a pure sense, however it is not the framework the Internet runs on. It's all Finite. Emotions, life, that stuff we think REALLY makes us human deep within happiness being life, all that is Infinite. The Internet makes all this stuff no more accounted for. And it then, to add pain to longing, shows us even MORE FINITE THINGS which taunt the non-existence within Internet spheres, of things of this Infinite nature. Continuous. This extra Finite shit? Just clogs it all up in our heads, makes it more known sometimes but when it was always perfectly provable that Infinity IS it is out there is Exists it sideways-8s is all. We didn't need the other things....they are all like
pre-internet life: 7523=BIG
internet says HEY WHOA I DOMINATE THAT 7523! LOOK, YOU WANT BIG HERE IT IS: 1672678264826482=BIG
We can keep adding to that big number...but it won't get us any closer to our goal, infinity. It just wastes our time, constantly adding +1 +1 +1 more numbers, counting, higher, must be getting there! keep going, we will feel Infinity!

Except, if you knew what the concept of Infinity was in the first place, you'd know adding +1, and all addition, is pointless- you don't need it to get there, and you won't get there while using it. Completely different concept. Simplicity in Complex Abstracts. Isn't too hard to explain to someone listening. Or find on wikipedia. Or via any method that is really looking actively...not distracted by the completely different truth that there are really a lot of finite numbers and fuck they are big! and thatd be a lot of money! to count away the sad human truths...at least until they come back. Cause they always will. They always will. And so yet another cliche proves it lived through the repetitions needed to become cliche...because of some deep wisdom. The more things change, the more they stay the same. So it goes. Poor Yorick indeed- the infinite jest continues, as more or less one might expect, if they managed to look hard enough and really care what they find from this looking. Lots of interesting things going on in 2009! It's good stuff, this Internet....as long as we know what we're getting ourselves into. More or less.

Thanks, Jared, for what was truly, in your words, an epic comment. I think Taylor plans on responding to some of your points, as well, but I wanted to touch on one in particular: "The more data and content we create, the more noise. We keep finding more noise, more noise, more noise everywhere. White noise."

This is a huge problem, of course. And it's precisely the mission of companies like Google to find signal in the noise. To pierce through the static to find the hidden rhythms and tones. Google wants to make sense of the web and to find relevant responses to the questions we're asking.

Is the web the answer to the human dilemma? Will the Internet inherently end loneliness and suffering and provide answers to the meaning of life? Probably not. The web is a tool, and should never be viewed otherwise. It may have cultures and industries and economies that revolve around it, but it should never define us.

Jared- thanks for the comment. You inspired me to write a similarly wide-ranging post, though I really only tackled one element of your critique (the "white noise" concern). As to the issues you raise about the authenticity of online community, I found this exchange (http://culture11.com/blogs/textpatterns/2009/01...) very insightful; quotes:

"there is a kind of obsessive connectivity fed by our current social networks — but it’s vital to understand that solitude, like silence, have rarely been available to human beings. [...]

"As Diana Webb has recently shown in her new book Privacy and Solitude: The Medieval Discovery of Personal Space [...] medieval Europeans in general simply accepted their lack of “personal space,” but others valued it and desired it sufficiently to retreat from the world, as hermits and anchorites, in order to get it. But these were necessarily special cases. Until the nineteenth century in Europe and other economically developed parts of the world, very few people have been able to find either solitude or silence. [...]

"If our technologies are making solitude and silence harder to come by, they are merely returning us to the condition of our ancestors and many of our global neighbors. Welcome to the human race, then."

Via Jarred, here's an interesting example of a new service that attempts to stitch together an individual's created content into a kind of multimedia journal with sharing options:

http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?i=bf288a7ffedd...

In an article about Twitter from New York Magazine, a relevant snippet (re: the tweeting of the details about the plane landing in the Hudson):

"Now think about that for a second. In the midst of chaos—a plane just crashed right in front of him!—Krums’s first instinct was to take a picture and load it to the web. There was nothing capitalistic or altruistic about it. Something amazing happened, and without thinking, he sent it out to the world. And let’s say he hadn’t. Let’s say he took this incredible photo—a photo any journalist would send to the Pulitzer board—and decided to sell it, said he was hanging onto it for the highest bidder. He would have been vilified by bloggers and Twitterers alike. His is a culture of sharing information. This is the culture Twitter is counting on. Whatever your thoughts on its ability to exist outside the collapsing economy or its inability (so far) to put a price tag on its services, that’s a real thing. That’s the instinct Stone was talking about. If the nation has tens of millions of people like Krums, that’s a phenomenon. That’s what Twitter is waiting for."