Re: <nettime> Blues in the American salon: "Digital Nation": What has the Internet done to us?

[carl guderian <carlg@vermilion-sands.com>]

Okay, I'll bite. I don't think I'll get around to watching the PBS  
Frontline show cited, so Ms. Havrilesky's commentary will have to do.

It's a bit lazy even allowing for the winter blues. Sure, it's  
Groundhog Day, which gets you six more weeks of winter, gopher shadow  
or no. Maybe Australian media commentators crank stuff like this out  
in bleakest July.  But a lot this stuff was said about television in  
the 1960s. (Some of it's still true; check out Harlan Ellison's "The  
Glass Teat / The Other Glass Teat," a collection of his columns about  
the boob tube from 1968 to 1970). People reading less, check.  
Attention spans dropping, double check. Bloviating about the  
Information Age, checkity-check. Okay, the great highschool reunion  
is new, and it's true, for now at least. It'll be something else next  
year. And it won't be the internet that brings the grim meathook  
future comes to those who never expected it.


On 2-feb-2010, at 14:49, Geert Lovink wrote:

> (Hi, where does this collective tiredness come from? Can someone
> explain this? Is it the winter? Depressed politics? Cold turkey post-
> Xmas feelings? Agreed, the weather is bad. Obama sucks. And the iPad
> is yet another disappointment. The 'I told you so attitude' doesn't
> bring much, I guess. Is it the great influence of Jaron Lanier on the
> American psyche? You tell me. Ciao, Geert)
 <...>


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