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Navigating brave new world of digital self-expression
By Andrew Lam |
June 4, 2012, Monday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
AT the end of the last millennium, I grieved over the lost art of letter writing, made points on how speed and easy access trumped style and depth, and how language is streamlined and intimacy forsaken for this currency called information. On a bullet train, I noted, the once beautiful countryside streaks and blurs.
But technology has also revolutionized human communication to the extent that high tech and high touch no longer necessitate opposing ideas. Essentially anyone can become a performer, analyst, entertainer, commentator, exhibitionist, lecturer, storyteller and what have you - and broadcast himself or herself across the globe to get instant feedback, new friends and fans.
Robert Young, Internet entrepreneur, noted, "People around the world are now learning how to leverage the incredible power inherent in the URL to create what is essentially a parallel universe of digital identities."
As professional entertainment writers continue with their strike, and as more eyeballs are migrating to the new media, it's ironic to think that thousands of years since we moved out of wintry caves in which we once told stories by the fire and painted on cave walls, many are going back to entertaining ourselves, forgoing the professionals, the bona fide artists, the traditional institutions.
According to Pew Research there are now more than 200 million Americans online, and 50 million adults who post original content, not to mention young people. But the US is behind China, a country with 450 million Internet users, and more than half of that population said in a recent poll that they have a parallel life online.
The digitalized self-expression phenomenon has created a sea change: practically every entertainment industry - music, porn, news media, movies, video rentals, TV shows - are in some ways in competition with citizen broadcasters.
Field study
No wonder sociologists and anthropologists are having a field day. Harvard and UCLA researchers, for instance, are monitoring profiles on Facebook to study how humans make friends. Indiana, Northwestern, Pennsylvania State, Tufts, and the University of Texas are testing theories about identity, self-esteem, popularity, collective action, race and political engagement. To this flock of studies, I would suggest one more: the tantalizing yet elusive thing called fame. Gone are the days when one sits at soda fountains at Schwab's wearing a tight knit sweater waiting to be discovered.
One can sit in bed wearing boxer shorts miles from Hollywood and still have a million viewers as in the case of David Choi - who writes his own music, doesn't comb his hair, sings in a sultry voice, and never cracks a smile, but, oh, fans adore him.
Or check out Kevin Jumba, a Chinese American who posts videos on YouTube about his life and millions of people tune in. Behind him are an army of citizen entertainers vying for eyeballs. So much so that Clive Thompson of Wired Magazine called this the Age of Microcelebrity.
But in this age of quick fame and shorter attention span, Andy Warhol's 15 minute fame prediction for everyone is reduced to about 15 seconds, if one is so lucky.
For if everyone who is a content producer online is a channel, then every mouse in every net surfer's hand is a remote control. By scrolling down or across one can get to the money shot, the crescendo or epiphany, then move on to the next vlog or blog - the beginning and end can be easily skipped, and so, for that matter, the forward arc.
It is a world in which being distracted is part of the new social skill set, and so viewers tend to read only part of the story, and the content producers likewise often offer no preface, no conclusions.
No surprise then that five out of top 10 Japanese best sellers in 2007 were novels written by young women who texted them on their cell phones with their thumbs. Thin on plot, short in sentence, and lacking in romantic descriptions, these cell phone novels sold like hot ramen to an audience so used to reading text messages on their commute.
So here's an old story made new: When human dared challenge the heavens by building a very tall tower called Babel, God struck it down and confounded us with many languages. The tower fell but it seems now certain it did not turn into dust. Instead it transformed into a marvelous horizontal grid of many voices, a lattice of the world's collective unconscious made semi-conscious by technology.
Perhaps the most important new skill yet required for our age is the ability to decipher the story in the fragmented world and to function well within it. Or, to borrow musical terms, the ability to develop an ear for the contrapuntal in the cacophony, discerning the new symphony from the din.
Andrew Lam is an editor of New America Media and the author of "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres" and "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora." His book of short stories, "Birds of Paradise," is due out in 2013.
But technology has also revolutionized human communication to the extent that high tech and high touch no longer necessitate opposing ideas. Essentially anyone can become a performer, analyst, entertainer, commentator, exhibitionist, lecturer, storyteller and what have you - and broadcast himself or herself across the globe to get instant feedback, new friends and fans.
Robert Young, Internet entrepreneur, noted, "People around the world are now learning how to leverage the incredible power inherent in the URL to create what is essentially a parallel universe of digital identities."
As professional entertainment writers continue with their strike, and as more eyeballs are migrating to the new media, it's ironic to think that thousands of years since we moved out of wintry caves in which we once told stories by the fire and painted on cave walls, many are going back to entertaining ourselves, forgoing the professionals, the bona fide artists, the traditional institutions.
According to Pew Research there are now more than 200 million Americans online, and 50 million adults who post original content, not to mention young people. But the US is behind China, a country with 450 million Internet users, and more than half of that population said in a recent poll that they have a parallel life online.
The digitalized self-expression phenomenon has created a sea change: practically every entertainment industry - music, porn, news media, movies, video rentals, TV shows - are in some ways in competition with citizen broadcasters.
Field study
No wonder sociologists and anthropologists are having a field day. Harvard and UCLA researchers, for instance, are monitoring profiles on Facebook to study how humans make friends. Indiana, Northwestern, Pennsylvania State, Tufts, and the University of Texas are testing theories about identity, self-esteem, popularity, collective action, race and political engagement. To this flock of studies, I would suggest one more: the tantalizing yet elusive thing called fame. Gone are the days when one sits at soda fountains at Schwab's wearing a tight knit sweater waiting to be discovered.
One can sit in bed wearing boxer shorts miles from Hollywood and still have a million viewers as in the case of David Choi - who writes his own music, doesn't comb his hair, sings in a sultry voice, and never cracks a smile, but, oh, fans adore him.
Or check out Kevin Jumba, a Chinese American who posts videos on YouTube about his life and millions of people tune in. Behind him are an army of citizen entertainers vying for eyeballs. So much so that Clive Thompson of Wired Magazine called this the Age of Microcelebrity.
But in this age of quick fame and shorter attention span, Andy Warhol's 15 minute fame prediction for everyone is reduced to about 15 seconds, if one is so lucky.
For if everyone who is a content producer online is a channel, then every mouse in every net surfer's hand is a remote control. By scrolling down or across one can get to the money shot, the crescendo or epiphany, then move on to the next vlog or blog - the beginning and end can be easily skipped, and so, for that matter, the forward arc.
It is a world in which being distracted is part of the new social skill set, and so viewers tend to read only part of the story, and the content producers likewise often offer no preface, no conclusions.
No surprise then that five out of top 10 Japanese best sellers in 2007 were novels written by young women who texted them on their cell phones with their thumbs. Thin on plot, short in sentence, and lacking in romantic descriptions, these cell phone novels sold like hot ramen to an audience so used to reading text messages on their commute.
So here's an old story made new: When human dared challenge the heavens by building a very tall tower called Babel, God struck it down and confounded us with many languages. The tower fell but it seems now certain it did not turn into dust. Instead it transformed into a marvelous horizontal grid of many voices, a lattice of the world's collective unconscious made semi-conscious by technology.
Perhaps the most important new skill yet required for our age is the ability to decipher the story in the fragmented world and to function well within it. Or, to borrow musical terms, the ability to develop an ear for the contrapuntal in the cacophony, discerning the new symphony from the din.
Andrew Lam is an editor of New America Media and the author of "East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres" and "Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora." His book of short stories, "Birds of Paradise," is due out in 2013.
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