Smartphone Junky
July 4, 2010
‘… and I’ll tell ya, things aren’t quite the same
When I’m rushing on my run…’
(Lou Reed, ‘Heroin’)
Panic mounts; an unsettling jolt hits the cortex when you get the no network message. How many times an hour… sorry, let me rephrase that: how many times a minute do you unholster and check for new mail, twitter notifications etc? How often do you find your attention drawn to whether that red light is flashing intermittently meaning you’ve got updates? If you’re a heavy user, the answer is most likely: yes.
We live in an age of information overload. Multiple answers to our incessant queries. Multiple realities engaged as we increasingly log out of our mundane existential life and log in to our online selves. We are legion. Look around you. Check out that unassuming army of app zombies, striding purposefully along their vectors like automatons, heads slightly bent forward, gazing intently at 4 square inches of light emitting diodes and 120g of plastic cupped in their steady hands.
Darwinian digression: our ancestors were primates, apes. One of the things that sets us apart from them is our highly developed power to reason. One thing we have in common is opposable thumbs, which allow us to grasp, grip, hold, handle and … fire off a tweet in under half a minute. I don’t know about you, but I’m using my thumbs now like there’s no tomorrow and getting ambidextrous into the bargain. And with the advent of touchscreen technology, those ‘ET phone home iPhone index fingers’ will get just about as nimble and responsive as a plastic surgeon’s.
We switch apps as if we were switching realities. We’re getting hooked on checking out our online alter ego(s). How long will it be before they take over from our ‘real’ ones? Before our online conversations, interactions, behaviours become more important, more fulfilling? If it hasn’t happened to some of you already . . .
Need to sign off – withdrawal symptoms starting to kick in, been offline too long. I’m gonna get my next fix – requesting . . . running script . . . loading . . . – man, that feels good!
Twitter Blues
March 23, 2010
have Biz and Evan
byte-n (sic) off more than they can
chew? Not yet it seems.
_______________
social networking in-
formation indigestion:
digital fast food…
_______________
…fast food two point oh
bytes are the new calories
social media feast
_______________
inbox bombarded
information overload
don’t know where to turn
_______________
2.0 many tiny
uniform resource locators
2.0 know where 2.0 start
_______________
what’s your avatar?
cyberspace info freako
tweet me if I know!
_______________
SXSW:
Austin power shows
e-merging technologies
in South by South West
Internet Milestone Blues: Looking Back Forwards
March 8, 2010
email spawned out of
academic/military
mainframe hook-up
__________
whole earth ‘lectronic link
first online community
across in SF
__________
grateful dead Barlow
puts the Well firmly on the
virtual map – it rocks!
__________
nineteen ninety one
TB-L goes live from CERN
with worldwideweb v.1.0
__________
nineteen ninety nine
music-sharing misfit Napster
irrupts on the scene
__________
Wales’ Wikipedia
globalised/ing source of knowledge
from the bottom up
__________
twentyten tipping point:
internet the people-cratic leveller
or in tweet fatigue?
