“The telegraph introduced a kind of public conversation whose form had startling characteristics: Its language was the language of headlines — sensational, fragmented, impersonal.” - Neil Postman
When people first received telegraphs from across America, they must have thought they were the hot shit. And honestly, they totally were. Through electrical wires, dots and dashes, people hundreds of miles away could tell each talk like they were next-door neighbors. Well, not entirely, but they no doubt thought it was just as good. If only those people could see me know.
Our dear friend Mr. Postman, in Amusing Ourselves To Death, says that the telegraph not only fundamentally changed the way the way we got our information, but also changed the content of that information. It has only gone downhill from there, or uphill depending on how you look at it. Back then, one person could receive one message at a time, and, unless they wrote the message down, couldn’t keep it for records or reference. Now I get my facts from Google reader. I can receiver hundreds of messages a day simultaneously and keep them all catalogued. Alexander Graham Bell would have crapped his pants. The change in the content of the information has also become more and more “ Sensational, fragmented and impersonal.” The following is a quote from sensei Postman with a few changes of my own. “ The internet permits no time for historical perspectives and no priority to the qualitative. To the internet, intelligence means knowing lots of things, not knowing about them.”
Perhaps I an painting with too broad a brush, but this is the way I use the internet, this is way I use my Google reader, which for me is the internet, and it is where my “facts” come from. Here is an example.
Our president has won the Nobel Prize. The way I learned that “fact”, or that “news of the day” if you will, was from one of my news blogs, I don’t even know which one. I don’t even know if I reacted. But many other people have. Page van der Linden from the Daily Kos says this
“Winning the Nobel Peace Prize is indeed an honor, but it is also a responsibility. Those who realize the dangers posed by nuclear proliferation understand and applaud Barack Obama's intention, and ongoing efforts, to make sure our national security goals set an example for other nuclear powers in the world.”
My news of the day has now been filled out some. My president not only won the prize, but he got it because he doesn’t like nukes. And who does really? I have more to say about nukes, but first a word from father Postman, “In both oral and typographic cultures, information derives its importance from the possibilities of action….But the situation created by telegraphy, and then exacerbated my later technologies, made the relationship between information and action both abstract and remote.”
I read that. I understand it. I ask myself “what will the information of my president having won a Nobel prize effect in my actions?” or better yet “will knowing that its because he doesn’t like nukes make it effect my actions?” Postman based his quote from information he had about the telegraph, the telephone and television. He had no idea what a Link was.
When I get a “telegraph” (a blog post) I can find out al sorts of background information, and related information. I can turn my initial ignorant reaction into and informed and well rounded, fact- checked opinion. So does this prove Senior Postman wrong? Are the bits of information I get from news blogs, and media blogs, and technology blogs, and video game blogs, and fashion blogs, and art blogs, and graphic design blogs more than just fodder for a cross word puzzle? I could link information together all day. I could weave it like an electronic Quipu, colored strings of text spiraling together, knotting in quotes that relate from one post to the next. All that to say I could get deep. But is it truly depth? Is it more than what papa Postman calls “knowing lots of things” and knowing nothing about them. I’m saying “no.” Width is not depth. All of the internet “news of the day” I receive may be able to be spread wide and linked to all manner of sources, but that does not make it deep. It still lacks importance, because it has nothing to do with my life’s actions and choices. It doesn’t matter how deeply I know about nuclear proliferation, or the history of the cold war, or North Korea, or mutually assured destruction. None of that information effects how I live, not for the positive anyway. In a Wall Street Journal article by George Shultz, Will Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn, they say
“Nuclear weapons were essential to maintaining international security during the Cold War because they were a means of deterrence.”
So at one point we needed nukes because other guys had nukes, and as long as we both knew we had them, we wouldn’t blow both of us to hell with them. The only way that information can affect the life of a normal human is to scare the-ever-loving-shit out of them. Honestly, what could a person living in the 70’s do about any of that? Nothing. One person hearing the news of “Russia has nukes” can’t apply that information to any part of their life, other than telling kids to hide under their desks. And really? Who was that helping?
So flash-forward to the present, I can receive Information faster and in more “depth” than television or the telegraph could, and I read “America’s President doesn’t like nukes, and he got a shiny Nobel award for it.” What in the world can I do with that information? Can I decide whether we use nukes or not? Can I tell Mr. President that I am going to throw away all of my nukes too, since I know he doesn’t like them so much? If I owned a nuke, I wouldn’t be a poor college student. That much is true. There is nothing I can do to stop American from making nukes, there is nothing I can do to get rid of the ones we have, there is nothing I can do to stop others from using their nukes on us. I can vote for people who might have some say on the matter, but even that is very small action that only happens rarely, and my vote holds so little a sway. This is almost depressing. Almost. Another thought from master Postman, “we may say then that the contribution of the telegraph to public discourse was to dignify irrelevance and amplify importance.”
If once there was a time that information meant that I would make different choices to survive my day, and my life would vary to the amount of information I was given, this is not that time, and this is not that information. Getting blown up by a nuke seems very, very important. It seems that it might be of life or death importance. But really, that’s just the telegraph talking. It’s very good at blowing up things that don’t really matter (pun very much intended). It makes me think that I really, really need to know as much as possible about the threat of nuclear annihilation and the man who stands between us and mutually assured destruction. But do I really? Is that information anything more than the wireless signal that translates to light on my computer screen, and makes text that’s only worth put into a crossword puzzle? Am I asking to many questions? One final thought from the Postman “There is no more disturbing consequence of the electronic and graphic revolution than this: that the world as given to us through television seems natural, not bizarre.”
I feel like a man lying on a hospital bed, who has been so caught up in thought about his medicine, forgot all about the iv in his arm.
Is it strange to give an award to a man that is against blowing up the world? Is it strange to live in a world where men have the ability to wipe out millions of lives with the push of a button (or the turn of a key if your into WarGames). Are there more than ten people in this world who actually like nukes? Probably. And that too is a bizarre thing. Things seem a lot more bizarre these days; I don’t think I realized it till recently.
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