Monday, June 27, 2011

Where It's At

There was a time in adolescence when everyone knew where the "gut" would be on Friday night. The Scene was the local drive-in and the crowd took the opportunity to cruise the Gut. Teens would congregate along an avenue in their cool rides and promenade to see and be seen. The urge toward identifying with a tribe is primal. Having a central connection, a place of belonging, anchors the self in a social context.
So it now is social media that provide the avenues for cruising and hanging out.Before the Internet, before TV, before telephones, before telegraphs—in the face-to-face world of our ancestors, getting together was very localized. Of course, long-range connections took place, but the means were cumbersome. Delay was intrinsic--you sent a message or wrote a letter if the other parties were distant, or you footed it to your friends' place to hang out if they were near. Your circle of closeness was limited.
Now we have Instant Messaging, tweeting, chatting online and virtual conferencing. Even a millisecond delay annoys us. We expect to stay connected constantly; hence the need to ban texting while driving and the need to warn pedestrians about the dangers of listening to loud i-pods and oblivious wandering into traffic while using one’s cell to "stay connected."
Certainly new possibilities come from being hooked in:
• You can participate in flash mobs and find out about raves (where you can experience actual injury and/or infection).
• You can indulge your habits and hobbies in a community of similar interests.
• You can even live an alternate existence in a fantasy world (but consequences have ways of finding you).
But now the world is ever with us, overwhelmingly like a flood, and our need to define ourselves by a set or circle of interests is more urgent than ever.
Now we live in a mega-world where we begin to feel lost unless we tribe up with a community of similar interest. For example, we can see how, despite the huge population, New York city subway riders are not a huge undifferentiated mass: every car has a casual community of commuters who daily travel together, share pictures of their kids, and connect on a regular basis. The Scene is a predictable social opportunity with people you know.
The same thing happens on electronic media: people connect in order to define themselves as part of--or in contrast to-- some community. In a way, the prevalence of more communication channels drives people to a greater sense of need to define their circle more narrowly and to cluster together more tightly.
To stretch the analogy--in a flood, all sorts will cling to the closest raft; and in the surging seas of information surrounding us currently, we find ourselves all in the same boat.

No comments:

Post a Comment