The AI-generated image above is intended to represent an analogy which is well-known but worth another airing. If we imagine ourselves draining a large, stagnant urban pond, we might expect to see all kinds of junk emerge as the water level subsides. Old tyres, rusty bikes and other junk nobody wants.
Assuming they are still with us, all adults over 40 have seen the internet evolve over the past 20 years and this gives us the pond analogy. The horrible junk was always there below the smooth surface of public life, but now it is becoming more visible.
Our digital world may be one reason why there appears to be more and more absurdity in social and political life. Why governments seem to be increasingly incompetent, celebrity culture increasingly banal and absurd. Why absurdity has become as visible as those tyres, rusty bikes and other junk emerging from the urban pond.
Suppose everything always was this absurd or even worse. Suppose the internet has made alternative viewpoints so much more available that the disgusting urban pond really is being drained in spite of powerful interests trying to fill it up again.
It didn’t begin 20 years ago of course, but an enhanced ability to check media stories plus political and official narratives must have changed something, at least for those who take advantage of it. An enhanced tendency to see political and official narratives as narratives rather than sources of veracity must have changed something.
The drained urban pond is no more than an analogy for something we can’t easily demonstrate. Yet it is still easy enough for millions of adults to recall what the internet offers compared to what was was on offer a few decades ago.
Suppose everything always was this absurd or even worse. Suppose the internet has made alternative viewpoints so much more available that the disgusting urban pond really is being drained in spite of powerful interests trying to fill it up again.
It didn’t begin 20 years ago of course, but an enhanced ability to check media stories plus political and official narratives must have changed something, at least for those who take advantage of it. An enhanced tendency to see political and official narratives as narratives rather than sources of veracity must have changed something.
The drained urban pond is no more than an analogy for something we can’t easily demonstrate. Yet it is still easy enough for millions of adults to recall what the internet offers compared to what was was on offer a few decades ago.
3 comments:
"All hands to the pumps!"
"Batten down the hatches"
Sam - drain the swamp and hold your nose.
Teddy - and don't let the water back in.
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