Frustration Friday: Connection and Disconnection

We're in a very connected world these days.  I've got anime from Japan, a new interest in Bowties from the UK, friends in Canada, receipies from India, and an mutual fund trying to navigate the Euromarket.  We talk via Facebook and Twitter, Skype and IRC to people all over the planet.

Flash mobs and memes rocket around the world.  Protests spring up out of cyberspace.  Petitions come into being and are rocketed off electronically.

The world is getting more connected.

It just makes the fact that some people are terribly out of touch and disconnected More Freaking Obvious.

I've watched the entire Occupy Wall Street events lately, and the cluelessness of many people reporting on it was astounding.  Look the economy sucks, politics is screwed up, and people are angry – and they're connected and rallying and getting the word out.  But I watched people try and map the protests to old stereotypes or actually ask "hey, what's all this about?"

The connected and the disconnected.

Or you can sit with me and watch Bank of America continue to melt down.  I'm sure when it finally implo-explo-loads it will be greeted as a SHOCK by many people viewing the insides of their own rectums.  On the other hand people like you and I, who stay in touch, have popcorn  . . . and vodka.  Or sake in my case.

The disconnected and the connected.

What's becoming obvious in this more connected world is how out of touch, insulated, ignorant, and deliberately stupid some groups of people are.  There's a lot of contrast when you look at the state of the world.

Dear disconnected people – you look like morons.  Oftentime insensitive and unethical morons (which you may be actually).  The only flaw?

You're not reading this.

Of course, we can all be out of touch, insulated, ignorant, and deliberately stupid.  So perhaps we should try and catch ourselves, but meanwhile it's up to people who are connected – hopefully us – to try and make sure the economy, careers, and the world works.

- Steven Savage

  • http://profile.typepad.com/6p0120a5823410970b www.genjipress.com

    And the whole reason they’re not reading this is because all that connectivity is a two-edged sword. I mentioned before, in a different context, how easy it is to shut people out, and these connectivity technologies allow you to do exactly that. You can shape your media environment in such a way that everything you do not want to hear — like, for instance, hard scientific evidence that your way of life is destroying the only world you have — is conveniently screened out. And every successive refinement of these technologies makes it all the easier, all the more desirable, all the more rewarding to create a kingdom wherein never is heard a discouraging word.
    Lester Bangs was more right than he realized. In an essay on Richard Hell (about whom Bangs was deeply divided — he admired and loathed Hell in about the same measure) he wote that Richard had once said “the best thing about being a rock’n'roll star would be the option of constructing his environment so that he would never have to be around anyone he didn’t want to know from, which not only sounds like building your own concentration camp [!] but is just exactly waht most of the declining rock stars of the sixties have done to themselves.” (from “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung”, pp. 263 – http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679720456/).
    Except now you don’t have to be a rock star to do that. All you need is your phone, your TV screen, and your own two ears. Or lack thereof.

  • http://profile.typepad.com/tamara126 Tamara Hecht

    I am guilty of asking “Hey, what’s all this about?” but I do so because I want to hear it “fresh.” In some situations, I find it unhelpful to offer the context I already know when seeking new information. Adding in the background details can obscure the truth or offend the person I’m talking to. I’d rather get all the bits of information “clean” and fit them together on my own.