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necessarian) wrote2018-01-01 07:15 pm
necessarian) wrote2018-01-01 07:15 pm
Entry tags:
[Archiving] On Stories & Technology
Originally posted: 27.4.'16
i was born in 1993. according to an article i once read in that part of the newspaper that exists to distract you from the real news, this makes me one year too early to be a part of generation whatever derogatory name we’re calling it now. i grew up on rental VCR and i had dial-up at home until i was 14. i’m not one for alarmist rhetoric, but i think it’s not DVDs or broadband that are the great evils of this generation. no, it’s the way we name and delineate generations–a marketing tool that has been used for the last century to vilify the youth of today, whichever today that is. there are undoubtedly differences between generations, but they’re not so clear-cut as these strict boundaries would like us to believe.
what doesn’t change, a constant throughout the generations, is the way people of an older generation look down on the youth. there is a sense that as society, as technology changes, so comes with it a reduction of character. that you are a less authentic person because you flow with the tides of invention. there is nothing i love more than holding a physical book in my hands. there is also nothing i love more than having a phone in my pocket, so i can take it out and read whatever i like, whenever i like.
there’s this weird belief that somehow technology is making us less literate, less creative. we all know that’s not true, but shouting it into our echo chamber won’t accomplish anything. still, it drives me up the wall to hear older people talk about how you can’t be a literate young person unless you cast aside the shackles of technology and social media and blah blah i’m bored already, do you seriously think that these two things cannot go hand in hand? the oral tradition diminished with print media. print media may fade with digital media, it may not. i’m not a soothsayer. but i am online, and i can tell you, literacy is alive and well on the internet. we can eschew traditional methods of publishing and broadcast ourselves live to an audience our ancestors wouldn’t have imagined possible. global communication is faster than every and growing faster every day. this doesn’t mean the end of anything.
in a lot of contemporary fantasy writing, there’s this line they have about how magic isn’t compatible with technology. why can’t magic be compatible with technology? is it written in some venerable ancient text that you can’t use your smartphone while you’re casting a spell? or is it simply that people think magic ought to be something ancient and analogue and ought to have nothing to do with the technological advances of today? i like stories where magic works hand in hand with technology, where it comes out of technology, where it creates technology. i like stories where ancient ideas and modern means can coexist. there’s nothing to say they can’t coexist in the real world, either. we are all a sum of our history. there is still an oral tradition, and even as digital media grows and grows and grows, there will still be print media.
so it’s just plain embarrassing to hear all these people talk as though it’s the end of the world. the end of the world they understand, maybe. but there is a future. technology is not ruining us as writers and artists. we are using it to make new and incredible things and we’re tying together the threads of ancient stories with our modern hands and fingers. we are still craftsmen, even though our paintbrush, our chisel, our typewriter, has changed its form. people who talk about the evils of technology and the internet will miss out on that future–their loss. as generation whatever, it’s our future, and we’re the ones shaping it.
what doesn’t change, a constant throughout the generations, is the way people of an older generation look down on the youth. there is a sense that as society, as technology changes, so comes with it a reduction of character. that you are a less authentic person because you flow with the tides of invention. there is nothing i love more than holding a physical book in my hands. there is also nothing i love more than having a phone in my pocket, so i can take it out and read whatever i like, whenever i like.
there’s this weird belief that somehow technology is making us less literate, less creative. we all know that’s not true, but shouting it into our echo chamber won’t accomplish anything. still, it drives me up the wall to hear older people talk about how you can’t be a literate young person unless you cast aside the shackles of technology and social media and blah blah i’m bored already, do you seriously think that these two things cannot go hand in hand? the oral tradition diminished with print media. print media may fade with digital media, it may not. i’m not a soothsayer. but i am online, and i can tell you, literacy is alive and well on the internet. we can eschew traditional methods of publishing and broadcast ourselves live to an audience our ancestors wouldn’t have imagined possible. global communication is faster than every and growing faster every day. this doesn’t mean the end of anything.
in a lot of contemporary fantasy writing, there’s this line they have about how magic isn’t compatible with technology. why can’t magic be compatible with technology? is it written in some venerable ancient text that you can’t use your smartphone while you’re casting a spell? or is it simply that people think magic ought to be something ancient and analogue and ought to have nothing to do with the technological advances of today? i like stories where magic works hand in hand with technology, where it comes out of technology, where it creates technology. i like stories where ancient ideas and modern means can coexist. there’s nothing to say they can’t coexist in the real world, either. we are all a sum of our history. there is still an oral tradition, and even as digital media grows and grows and grows, there will still be print media.
so it’s just plain embarrassing to hear all these people talk as though it’s the end of the world. the end of the world they understand, maybe. but there is a future. technology is not ruining us as writers and artists. we are using it to make new and incredible things and we’re tying together the threads of ancient stories with our modern hands and fingers. we are still craftsmen, even though our paintbrush, our chisel, our typewriter, has changed its form. people who talk about the evils of technology and the internet will miss out on that future–their loss. as generation whatever, it’s our future, and we’re the ones shaping it.