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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

The Speed Of News

Newspapers are falling by the wayside. The internet delivers news more quickly, at a greater speed and volume, more than the old news can. When the ancients sought to build a tower to heaven, they were scattered over the earth, mutually incomprehensible to each other, speaking different tongues. When we seek knowledge at the speed of light, what will happen? Knowledge is not a sound-bite. Knowledge is enduring. If a sound-bite is the taste of candy, knowledge is the extra weight that come from the calories and carbs. Once again, we cannot control our cravings. We seek monumental portions, we seek sugar spikes in our blood. We are gaining informational mass, while living in knowledge-anorexia. Nothing endures. Nothing may endure, because it may cause us to remember, and if we remember - having learned some eternal truth - we may then not need the constant flow of data. We cannot confront wrongdoing at high levels, because we might remember...we might have a narrative constantly before us on what is right and what is wrong. This cannot exist. We could not have gone to war in Iraq so easily, had people had the knowledge that war is uncertain, tragic, and destructive of everything. This knowledge had to be hidden under the speed of incoming disinformation and incorrect intelligence. Newspaper themselves participated, and marched like an inmate band at Auschwitz, playing themselves to their own fate: the allergies of news, the irrepressible itching, the constant cough, the burning in the stomach, the ups and downs as you are being peppered with selected bits of information, programmed by a corporate entity. We stand about watching, helpless. We stood about helpless as Senator Phil Gramm destroyed the banking system. We stood about helpless as Iraq was invaded. What good is any news or knowledge to people who will not help themselves?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

No good whatsoever, to answer your last question. But worse even than the knowledgeable not helping himself is the self with no knowledge, a breed that is multiplying like bacteria in the U.S. I picture a Clockwork Orange in every neighborhood.

Montag said...

Yes. The Clockwork Orange is just like Our Man in Havana : they actually do a pretty good job of telling us the future...
but we look at such things as mere art.

Maybe the art-instinct is the one which gives our minds wings.