E. Tage Larsen ~ Nowhere in Particular

From Placement

“What do you want to do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to see a movie?”
“OK.”
“Which movie would you like to see: there are four playing now.”
“I don’t know.”
“Would you just prefer to go home?”
“OK.”

A scene not unlike the hallmark footage from the Ernest Borgnine movie “Marty” where two barflies trade rehearsed pleasantries, however this particular exchange was a variant on many which played similarly over this past weekend when my step-brother came for a visit. Aside, from being an exceptionally bright boy, I imagine he is a pretty typical fourteen-year-old: scruffy, attracted to skateboarding, and a natural but unholy obsession with acquiring an “I “heart” NY” thong for his Baptist girlfriend.
…
At supper, he would devour everything at the table while wearing his ipod. He would join the conversation when something piqued his interest, and only after asking us to repeat what we’d just said. Evenings were spent with the TV on while he SMS-ed friends from his cell phone on the couch, broken by: frequent checks of his email; Instant Messaging a completely different set of people; and surfing the web. Occasionally, he would check back with us and the program he was “watching.” I can’t tell you how many times I heard either: “Is this the part where…?” or “Did I already miss the…?”

Miss what? What could you possibly miss? I haven’t seen that much electricity coursing through anyone without a switch being thrown and a late stay-of-execution. Yet still, Chris is a brilliant boy. He’s a worldly traveler - mixing into multiple cultures with an ease that is enviable. How much of that is being recanted through iphoto scrapbooks and DVR replays? Is this now what passes for genuine experience? How do you catalogue “fond memories?”

If you can be everywhere at once, are you really anywhere at all? Of course, this transition is not without precedent, presently I sit here streaming audio on my laptop, typing eighty words a minute and answering occasional phone calls and email. The genealogy is highly traceable down to the generation we’ve arrived at. Yes, Chris is the next wave. Where once I might have once had my pretenses at cutting-edge, my domesticated evenings are spent thrilling at Giada De Laurentiis on the Food Network – soft-focus risotto recipes are hardly edgy fare.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (“Plugged In, but Tuned Out: Getting Kids To Connect to the Non-Virtual World,” Oct. 6, 2005) singled out this post-Y generation from, well… the rest of us. If mine was the generation that saw video games kill pinball, then his is the generation that could care less that last week, in a now multi-billion dollar industry, EA games was routed for screwing its employees on overtime pay.

The WSJ article bemoans what most of us have participated in over this last decade regarding the infringements of technology on personal space and how it shakes the family tree. There is nothing new there, at least in middleclass-America. It’s no longer a matter of wrestling with convergence technology or cross-platform models… that’s so 90s thinking, what with its picture-within-picture and interactive TV. His generation is adrenalized – a generation raised on multi-tasking would of course result to multi-tainment. Why suffer marginal television when you can do that plus… ? Why eat dinner with your family when you can listen to a comedy, text your friends, “and” have dinner?

“To repeat something once is one thing, to do it over and over is another thing again. Through repetition we can be led to a place where it may be difficult to differentiate, where there may be no telling where we are. If all is the same, over and over, then nothing is distinguishable; deprived of the means to measure, of the ability to tell one moment from another, or one point from the next, we slip, merge into an enveloping sameness and lose our place [ ed. Emphasis mine]” – Graham Gussin, “Out of It,” from “Nothing,” p.11, 2001

Which blue is your blue again? The desire for specificity and exclusivity are growing. As “simplicity” was largest marketable aspirant of the late 90s, I offer that we are now a society moving into more selfish territory. Drawing lines is vogue because of the overload. We no longer find it palpable to coat our environment with thin zen and canned hubris. Name it. Design it. Brand it. It is said, that Television destroyed the neighborly aspect of society. People no longer had reason to visit for entertainment or to fill the void. It would follow that personal television and other forms of isolated entertainment would continue that trend wrenching the individual away from their peer group or family (always maintaining that opt-in element. “Is this the part that… ?”)

E.Tage Larsen

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