So I signed up for some sessions from The Dark Forest Collective. Led by Katherine Dee and Peter Limberg, I join a Zoom call about Internet Real Life.
"Internet Real Life (IRL), hosted by Katherine Dee & Peter Limberg, is a four-part series exploring the shift toward a new way of relating to the internet—one beyond naive optimism or doomer pessimism. Each session features a guest presentation followed by a Q&A. The series runs via Zoom from April 4 to 25, with sessions on Fridays at 12 PM ET." [from the Metalabel sign-up site]
The first session, last Friday, April 4th, included a presentation by Molly Soda. Molly published a reading list to prepare for the session which included several articles on "cringe", something I'd never heard of before.
After Molly's presentation and Q&A, we were broken into two Zoom rooms and given the question:
How do internet aesthetics reflect and reinforce cultural anxieties?
I listened during our Zoom room's "Quaker-style" discussion. Here is what came to me towards the end of our discussion...
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As I listened and pondered the question, "How do internet aesthetics reflect and reinforce cultural anxieties?", it occurred to me that there was no discussion about the cultural anxiety, the fear some people have about the rate of technological change. Now, being 70 years old, a Boomer (born 1946 to 1964), I have a different perspective from some of the younger folks on the call. Most were Zoomers (born 1981 to 1996) or Millennials (born between 1997 and 2012). But I was struck by the internet aesthetic of rapid change. Change is beautiful! Molly Soda's presentation seemed a good example.
As an internet performance artist, Molly moves quickly from one social media platform to another, exploring the "newness" and the potentials of each new form. Like an oil painter of the late 1800's playing with each new paint color as it is released, her web site is impressionist, a wild collage of pixelated images and animated GIFs. She catches moment to moment, her personal history of the early internet. Movement and change are the hallmarks of her performance, largely exploring the "tween" years, between child and adult, in an era of rapid technological change.
"What is the next thing?" she seems to ask. "Where is it? I'm ready!"
If you are born now, the world is not changing, does not change, at least not until the next generation.
Where did all this "change" come from? Certainly, rebellious-youth demands change. Change is the moniker of new, different. But do all cultures demand change? When I think of indigenous cultures, I think of long-term stability, sameness, generation after generation, for thousands of years. When I think of far-eastern cultures, I think of cyclical, undulating, cultures over thousands of years (Hindu or Chinese). Western culture is marked by rapid change, especially in the 700 years since the start of the Renaissance, and the 340 years since the Enlightenment.
For Western culture, change is tied to scientific discoveries, which are coming at an ever-increasing rate. A culture of change supports the philosophy of "I/me", which enables each generation to become something different, accepting the "now" as given. Change also supports the economic forces of free-enterprise, where new and improved are the watchwords of billionaires. The mega-businesses erode and disintegrate older and slower cultural institutions , such as religion and government, leaving them flummoxed and out-maneuvered. And as our products are increasingly digital, there is no need to slow down to re-tool the factory. It's the consumers who need to be re-tooled, leaving large segments of our communities at risk of being abandoned, cast off as too slow, too burdensome.
"How do internet aesthetics reflect and reinforce cultural anxieties?"
If change is beautiful, then what do we judge the old?
