I was reading an article in last week's New Statesman Don’t sell me your dream: Far from liberating us, technology isolates us and makes us stupid.
It is a prime example of writing (and getting paid for) nonsense. Some small points that ring true - how Blackberries are just a way for employers to keep control over employees' free time - but are misused to 'prove' a greater fallacy.
He says
The New Statesman (funded mainly by Geoffrey Robinson - until last month ) is a bad example, but, in general, the paper-based Press has depended on advertising for centuries.
I used to read Cosmopolitan regularly. There were numerous glossy adverts for all sorts of 'lifestyle' and fashion products, sitting alongside articles extolling the virtues and the route to happiness via the purchase of totally unrelated lifestyle and fashion 'must-haves'. I am not the greatest fan of capitalism, but as a democratic socialist, I can see advantages as well as disadvantages in the capitalist market. The disadvantages are how the advertising and acquisitive culture makes us stupid and isolates us from emotions and experiences that have little or no monetary value.
He slags off Wikipedia as being inferior to getting on one's bike and going to the library to get reference books. He clearly doesn't know that Wikipedia has been found to be as reliable as the Encyclopaedia Britannia. He obviously doesn't understand the difficulties of being a teenager and cycling to Manchester Central Library on a cold wet windy winter's school night on the off-chance of being able to get a reference book that isn't available in Trafford libraries but would help with that history essay, in the mid-1980s.
I am a massive fan of web-based technology. Since I took up blogging, I have transformed the way I take photos. I got a digital camera in 2001 but initially used it as I had used film camera - for snapshots of sights and people. Inspiration by other bloggers changed how I saw the art of photography. More importantly, I was inspired to take days out for the ostensible purpose of blogging and photography. The pleasure of those days out, inspired by technology, have been about the sensual and physical connection with place and - often - nature, and the companionship of my partner.
I never went to the Royal Opera House until they introduced online booking (although there is little direct cause and effect). I had swallowed the myth that tickets are impossible to get and extortionately expensive. I still meet older people who believe it will be impossible to get tickets for Plácido at the ROH in either Tamerlano or Simon Boccanegra next season. Extremely difficult, I think, to obtain one of the approximately 10,000 available. But not impossible. And made simpler by technology, specifically the world wide web.
I get to download recordings of operas and concerts broadcast on radio and TV in other countries, (or recorded in-house!) including some dating from before I was born. Perhaps this New Statesman 'journalist' would dismiss my interest in music (irrespective of taste and genre) as another pointless addiction to technology. But such a dismissal would make the article even less relevant, and isn't implied in it, anyway.
It is by 'meeting' people on the internet with shared interests (and often, meeting them in 'Real Life') that I have been emboldened to travel abroad for operas. But not just for operas. Take the forthcoming trip to Paris. The main reason for going is for Cyrano de Bergerac. But we are going for several days and intend to do some intensive sight-seeing. Despite, or perhaps because of Paris's proximity, I'm not sure I would ever have got round to organising a city break there. Opera tickets, train tickets, and hotel were all researched and booked on line, by electronic transfer of funds. All could have been done by post, but I doubt that I would have taken the initiative without the www.
One of the things I like about Facebook is that I have daily communication with members of mine and Jimmy's extended families, with slight acquaintances and old friends, government ministers and opera singers. A Luddite would say that I should make more effort to keep up with them in Real Life (not the ministers and singers!). And that is undoubtedly true. But geographical and lifestyle separation makes this impractical. I like the age and generation mix; my Facebook Friends range from ten years old (unofficially - having sneaked in under her Mum's - my sister's - ID) to someone I think is 61 (his birthday is 29 February; if he was 57 that would make him the twin of someone else, such a coincidence would surely have been remarked upon in 1994 or 1998).
I think with just about anything one can think of - food, exercise, football, politics, opera, work, leisure, shopping, sex, DIY, religion, alcohol - social media are best in moderation. It's almost certainly unhealthy to define one's existence by just one of those things, and very stupid to see them as the ultimate panacea.
Daily, I see acquaintances in, outside or heading for the same old same old pub where they spend their entire leisure time, rarely venturing to neighbouring pubs, let alone far away Brixton, Streatham and Clapham town centres. If that's how they want to spend their time, fine, by I believe my life is infinitely richer because of my above-average internet use than it would be if my life revolved around my local.
I am certain I shall see more people I know in Paris than if I wandered into any local pub except those on my road. Stupid? Isolated? I think otherwise.
