Euan's We get the world we deserve gets an amen from this corner. It encapsulates a lot about why the net is better, and a world of difference away from anything to do with traditional media.
As to the concern about the scary things in the world this is far from being the preserve of the web. I am sitting watching TV with my wife as I write this and almost every drama on every channel seems focussed not only on violence but sick, twisted violence. Where did the idea that is was what we want from our entertainment come from?
[...] this is ... the passive consumption of insidious stuff that erodes our shared sense of what is normal in ways that I believe are ultimately damaging for society.
In the same way as the web let me decide whether or not to watch the execution of Saddam Hussein, whereas TV didn't because I couldn't get to the remote in time, it also lets me decide what violent or sick images to allow into my consciousness in a way that television doesn't.
[...] The biggest difference is that it takes an active decision not to watch stuff on TV whereas on the web takes an active decision to watch stuff.
I did a piece a while back about TV Programming being an act of violence, and, although it was rhetorically a bit pushed, I stick by it, the more TV I watch the more I feel preyed upon, not just by the manipulations of programmers, but by the mental assualts of those who make the programmes.
Over the years I've seen a fair bit of Mrs Marple and Midsomer Murders (god help you if you live in a small English rural community, you are sitting duck for kinky sex and multiple murders) but I bale out when we get to the American stuff, either because it is sadly unrealistic like CSI or relentlessly vile like SVU.
And I leave it for the same reasons that Euan hates it. I think it damages the people who perform it and the people who watch it. I walked out of a live performance of the Lieutenant of Inishmore a couple of years ago for similar reasons; its graphic violence cannot be good for the psyches of the cast and I refused to participate in that kind of abuse of the performers, let alone the audience.
The net gives us choice, control and the ability to influence the content we access, TV responds by becoming ever more graphgic and visceral, and its a dumb thing.
BTW, there's a great comment on Euan's piece by Olly Wright about the multidimensional approach that he has to watching a movie like the Prestige, and he too has it down right. The new is so much better than the old, which has no actual idea about how to compete because its not even in the game.
I just read your post about TV being an act of violence, and your comments in this post. I agree wholeheartedly with both Euan and you.
Something that has greatly interested me recently is Marshall McLuhans book Understanding Media. With his notion of 'The Medium is the Message' he encourages us to look beyond just the content of the medium, into the form. What behaviour does it provoke? How does it change our habits?
Television viewed through this lens is particularly telling. Yes the obnoxious content is damaging, but it's the means in which it is delivered that is the real culprit. The fact that we cannot choose what we see and what we don't: Euan's point about not getting to the remote in time, and your description of 'daily fix of the electronic drug', are at the core of what McLuhan is saying. We are what we perceive: with this understood, the ability to choose what media we consume is a moral imperative.
As you said, our brains our being rewired by the shift from push to pull media. It doesn't have to be this way, and, if we get it right, it won't stay this way.
Posted by: Olly Wright | March 15, 2007 at 10:24 AM