Culture Now

The medium is the message.

So what message are we transmitting through our new culture at the dawn of the third millennium? Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and many other data driven, managing, and producing companies now dominate our free time, disposable income, and even our culture.

When McLuhan wrote the famous phrase above he had a particular idea in mind about what he called a medium — anything that affected the externalization of the senses — and what he meant by the message. Using Facebook to play Candy Crush Saga sends a message far greater than simply telling others that you have too much free time or are willing to overlook corporate greed if it is packaged in bright colours and childish animation.

Social games — and Facebook and social media more generally — tell us a great deal about our culture and what is valued and what we are willing to cast aside for those values. We must consider, therefore, what the companies above and our support of — or obsession with — them says about our values.

Popularity is the most important metric of value. The US Dollar is not valuable because there is a pile of gold in Fort Knox; it is valuable because everyone else in the world agrees it is valuable. For that matter gold itself is only as valuable as we agree it is. It is shiny and not very common so everyone wants it — and that makes it valuable.

What is popular in our culture? Quantity trumps quality every time. Here is a list of thirty-seven unbelievable things you should already know about your friends! Rather than learning deep or important facts we leap towards the fast and superfluous so we can get something novel every second.

Transience is king. Nothing gold can stay, as Robert Frost would say. We must hold a high opinion of our opinions. Thoughts and comments are quickly scrolled past, feeds filling with ever new material, the old disappearing into the digital void. Or as David St. Bernard once sang: “I’m afraid of all the poetry nobody cares to read.”

We enjoy screaming into the void. But only when we can convince ourselves that there is an audience of admirers and friends filling the empty space.