Thanks to “recommendation software”, machines are now matchmakers.
Landline phones used to be our shrines (e.g. “Mom, this is for you”), television our fireplace.
We refute and rebuke unbaked and unedited thoughts (now, they outright preach Hate yet claiming First Amendment Protection and Tax break). Today’s news announced funding cut for watchdog monitoring of human rights violations.
Pretty soon, “common sense” (singular) splinters into common senses (plural).
Last month, there was a clash https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/08/us/montgomery-boat-dock-fight/index.html
at a designated space for public boat docking.
The private spills over onto the public sphere. More I phone than pay phone (extinct). Journalists used to rush (scoop) to a rare pay phone off the hotel lobby to file breaking news. Now, the sign says, “Please don’t put your I-phone on speaker” or please turn off your digital device before the show.
Perhaps you might also like to read my other blogs etc… (self-referential, self-loop).
Faster, smaller, cheaper…. more platforms with Nvidia-enabled TikTok. The death of expertise. The rise of clone “anchors” e.g. Cronkite, Brokaw. In language creators for pennies ads. (as of this edit, Google lost another court case).
Always on. It’s your network. It’s YouTube. What’s used to be in the closet, now heralded to the whole wide world (web): gay pride parade, gay comedy hour (and in Vietnam, gay funeral entertainers – hired to keep the dead company for three nights on the cheap – will work for drinks).
Audience (who have always on the receiving end of broadcast news) protest: “Mad like Hell, …won’t take it anymore” then find themselves on the other side of the mike via just a I phone and an internet connection. Suit yourself.
By “Like”- ing them, we delude ourselves (that the law of reciprocity and common sense would apply, karma-speed back to us to validate our longing for significance and relevance, a new Caesar of our own digital empire (with our connection – Spartacus waiting for the kill thumbs- down).
Lonely planet. Every man is an island. Cast away. Hearing and seeing only what we ourselves project on the screen (self-filtering content and curating). Sad and lonely eyes that stare a thousand yards while juggling multiple choices (it used to be a simpler test, the other side of the Information Age).
The longer we live, the lonelier we get. Groundhog Day everyday (Walmart keeps pushing for another “Day” of celebration i.e. Valentines, Good Friday? Easter, Memorial, Fourth of July etc…Mothers’ Day, Fathers’ Day, Earth Day, X-spouse Day….just to break the monotony cycle.
True (analog) friends are non-existent in our Digital era. Fake news. Fake boobs. Fake friends. Hi-tech low touch.
I would be surprised if you disagreed with me on the theme (of life as paradox: more means but less will – to communicate, to self-discover and to see the world beyond our confine).
We all feel it. The Elephant in the room. It’s called free platform, yet at everyone’s expenses. Paul Tournier once touched on similar dilemma. His “Escape from Loneliness” was written before the Internet.
We’re talking to ourselves, taking our own pictures then deleting them.
If we cut the cord, social media would suffer the fate of landline, of pay phones and park benches.
Every eyeball is an island. And when zooming out, we notice a data-dotted landscape where everyone talks all at once. Aliens in our own planet. Lonely planet. Even Hate itself dims out and blends in with Love as casualties of an analog past. Two-prong plug in a three-prong society (Andy Rooney).
Please disregard, dis-like and delete after reading this. It’s gibberish and rubbish. Just filler for fun. Unless it hit the spot.
Our new century makes New York City “lonely crowd” dwarf-like. When New York gets lonely, it’s the end of the world as we know it.
Thang Nguyen 555 