Heading for a crash

Sometimes I find it a bit overwhelming living here in the future. It's easy to forget that it's the future or to deny it. I can usually convince myself that it can't officially be considered the future yet: there are no flying cars (or not very many at least). But, right now I am holding a glowing flip open electronic box in my lap flipping through a vast ether or information that I am in no way plugged into, while a tiny, sleek glowing box autmatically recharges itself and loads itself with all of the amusing bits of sound and image stored on the flip open electronic box. We carry phones that work wherever we go, store our personal information and, sometimes, take pictures and movies. My email account has figured out the news stories that I will be interested in just by scanning my emails for lists of words (creepy). It's the future and, frankly, it's a bit overstimulating.

Now, granted, I have Ludditious tendencies. I don't own my own laptop or iPod (I just mooch). I still have a big, bulky cathode ray tv. I still watch TV. I still buy CDs (sometimes) and, in caae you haven't figured it out, I don't know html. So, maybe, labelling the present: the future may be a but hyperbolic. But, one thing is certain. The future is coming and it is not going to stop coming.

In spite of my utter lack of tech savvy, I am still able to post my random, poorly organized thoughts so that whoever stumbles across them in this (vomit) global village of (double vomit) cyberspace can read them. McLuhan thought that the global village would bring us all closer together for better or worse. But, I think at some point this continued fragmentation of mass media pushes us further apart. If the medium really is the only message, then, fine, we are all getting the same message of tiny little screens (be it cellphone, video iPod or Blackberry. But, if content matters at all, then this continued insulation will drive away any semblance of community. Mass visual media originated with nickelodeons, but quickly expanded into large movie theaters. People were brought together through a collective psychic experience. Early broadcasting had a two-pronged effect. On the one hand, it pushed us apart by denying us the collective experience of the theater, but on the other with Network broadcasting and, relatively, limited choices, it provided us with larger collective experiences and easy cultural reference points (who didn't love lucy?). With cable and then digital cable and satellite, our choices got broader and we were able to identify ourselves, more and more, not just by what products we bought, but also by what media we consumed (I know Veronica Mars. You know Veronica Mars. We can be friends.). As the internet gets faster and faster and technology gets more advanced and easier to use, more and more people are producing media content. This is increasing our media consumption choices by the thousands every day. It's great that, in theory, everyone can express themselves and be noticed on the internet and it's fantastic that people don't feel like they need a lot of money or the backing of big media anymore. But, as our choices, continue to grow, will anything be able to stand out? Will there be any mass collective psychic reference points that will bind us together as having a common culture?

Right now, the marketers and the technology companies are conspiring to give us everything we ever wanted: a 24 hour, totally personalized media experience. We will have all the music that we like, all the movies we like, all the blogs we like right there at our disposal at all times. We will totally withdraw from the outside world and exist, almost entirely in the world of our choosing. Granted, society won't die out that quickly. If World of Warcraft has taught us anything, it's that people seeking an alternative world in which to live, often pick one that others live in. But, it's happening. This technorevolution came fast (I didn't know anyone with the internet until 1993, now I don't know anyone without, at least, access to it.) It came fast and it has barely begun.

The thing that I worry about is whether our biological/mental evolution can keep up with out technological evolution. Sure, in some places people can craft identities comprised solely of YouTube clips, but elsewhere, people are killing each other by the thousands. It's the fear of The Matrix The Terminator and every post-nuclear Holocaust movie you've ever seen. Eventually, our technology will get so overwhelming that it will practically wipe us out. Whether or not, we wind up having to band together to fight the robots or that gang of motorcycle punks out to steal our potable water, one thing is clear: Our society is totally addicted to technology and, one day, it's going to overdose.

Is broadcasting going the way of the antenna?

As the dark days of this long winter break from new episodes continue, I've been occupying my nights in a much more fruitful way. I've been watching an excessive amount of Veronica Mars on DVD. I think that it may be the only way to get into the show. I had tried to watch it several times because of the good reviews or because of its position after the Gilmore Girls, but I had never been able to become engaged or I would find myself annoyed at a completely random detail: "Eww! Why is the Dad bald???" I'm not the only one who has this problem. My confession to my New Year's Eve companions that the show was my new passion was met with a "That's even worse than the Gilmore Girls." I, of course, replied with my stock "It's really great once you get into it," which, in turn was met with "I don't want to get into it!" Of course, if anyone sat down and watched the pilot, they'd be into it and then they would follow my lead and watch all of Seasons 1 and 2 on DVD in less than 3 weeks. Of course, now that I've watched all of those seasons, I am left in the middle of season 3 with no clue what's going on. I can't decide whether to suck it up and start from wherever they are in the narrative or ignore the show all together until Season 3 is released on DVD next fall or to download the episodes from this season that I've missed so far. But, I hate coming into any narrative having missed everything and I don't want to miss another minute and I hate watching anything on my tiny little computer screen. I know what you're thinking "Suck it up, dinosaur! This is the age of YouTube and streaming video..." but I'm just not there yet and I like my box, y'know the one with the cathode ray tube.
It's the curse of the serial drama: it's hard to pick up the narrative. It's why my buddy Ludovici hasn't watched Heroes, even though he'd be totally into it. He missed the beginning. It's why i've never seen Lost or 24 or any of those other shows. You have to get on at the beginning of the ride or the ride is no fun or totally confusing. It's why most serial dramas fail and are cancelled quickly. It sucks when they are cancelled too quickly to even release a DVD, because then it's a fragmented narrative. It can be such a vibrant form of narrative, but it is so difficult to build a TV sized audience.
It makes me wonder just how long broadcast TV will last. More and more, people want to watch things on their own time with minimal commercial interruption, so they pay extra for DVR or Tivo or they download the episode online or they wait for the DVD to come out. The act of making sure to be home at a certain time to watch something as it is broadcast is slowly being relegated solelyto sports broadcasting. But, if they stop broadcasting the shows in the first place, then there wouldn't be anything to Tivo or put on DVD or download (except all that ironic train wreck crap all over YouTube). Perhaps, Big Media will start using the same business model as small independent film distributors. Small film distributors lose a lot of money putting their movies out into movie theaters, so that when they are promoting the DVD, more people will have heard of the film because it had a capsule review in their local paper. Similarly, TV will begin to view its broadcasts merely as advertisements for the DVD release or the website or whatever. I hope they do. It would be sad to see the serial drama go away. It is my current favorite form of narrative.