I spent the better part of a month prepping and shooting down in Florida. Since I was producing the 'interactive version' of the TV show, I was put on the TV production crew as an associate producer. This was to keep me informed/involved in production meetings,shooting schedule changes, location scouting, editing, et al.
One afternoon, I walk into the production offices (after spending 7 hours driving around and looking at abandoned power stations and warehouses in the glorious mid summer Florida humidity), and the production coordinator starts going ape sh#t on me, screaming that he has been trying to get in contact with me all day long, that my stupid little game is totally screwing up the show, and that I am a complete failure as a producer.
I let him vent, then calmly lifted up my tee-shirt, exposing the following items hanging on my belt:
- Walkie Talkie (provide by the show)
- Motorola Flip Phone (also provided by the show)
- Pager (again - show provided)
- My own pager (# posted on giant production board he was standing by)
17 years later, I look at the sheer number of ways in which I interact/communicate with the world, and it is staggering:
- Face to face
- Home land line telephone
- Snail Mail
- Cell Phone - Voice /Text
- 3 different IM services
- 3 separate Email accounts (soon to add a 4th)
- FourSquare
- Google Chat
- Google+
- Face Book
- Face Book Chat
- Linked In
- About.Me
- Runkeeper
- 3 different Blogs (this one being the latest)
- SKYPE - PC and Mobile
There is literally no way for someone NOT to be able to interact me, and for that matter, for me to interact with the rest of my 'world' . Yet, I often feel as though I'm screaming into a vacuum.
We have come up with so many ways to 'stay connected' that I think it has become just white noise. I have all of the communication channels listed above because...well, I guess I just don't want to miss out. In doing so, I think my message, my information , my data, my...me is in danger of getting lost.
Don't panic!! I'm not going all Ted Kaczynski, and relegating my communication to rambling typed manifestos (this blog not withstanding).
I'm going to work on having something to say...not because I have the channels to 'broadcast on' but because I want people to actually hear what I have to say.
Maybe we have become too accessible. Too much information. Think tweets. Do I really need to know what someone is thinking any given moment? Why would someone think their stream of consciousness is of interest? Why would anyone else? Does anyone really need to know if you are disappointed in the crooked little heart the barista drew in the foam of your latte? "If everything weighs the same everything weighs nothing." We are surrounded and bombarded with the banal. It is insidious and it is everywhere. That is what I think of when you say "white noise".
ReplyDeleteI don't think of it as 'information'. It's just raw data. This is the Catch-22 of the information age...we have the ability to generate HUGE amounts of data, but lack the ability to discern between valid information and, as I called it, 'white noise'. The catch is, one person's noise is another's life changing morsel of pure truth.
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