“In boiling everything down to digital signals, we lose the colour and flavour and turmoil of competing values” Siva Vaidhyanathan
As we struggle with a knawing social and engagement fatigue and pine for cultural refreshment and maybe a view from some higher ground, we consider the reality that we might just be hitting an ending and a new beginning in how we relate to each other and how the online social and sharing economy is driven hard by a higher ratio of relayed and repeated experience than of any new, original and/or ‘real world’ experience. We ponder whether our endings come in phases. Is it just inevitability heaped upon inevitability? Are our losses of interest contagious and when does the muting become a social mutation.
When we are no longer excited but wary of the seamlessly harmless magic around us, we have to bet our future on a larger diversity of experience and engagement. Not one funnel and maybe no funnels at all. We must branch out further into the woods, further on up the hill. The more saturated in data we become, especially poor, sad, forgettable data, the greater the threat to our future dignity and diversity. What is good for one person or one company or one country or one culture is not necessarily good for everyone.