Our Media, Ourselves: Are We Headed For A Matrix?
Our Media, Ourselves: Are We Headed For A Matrix?
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https://www.npr.org/2012/02/20/147041182/our-media-ourselves-are-we-headed-for-a-matrix
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Our
Media, Ourselves: Are We Headed For A Matrix?
AUDIE
CORNISH, HOST:
When
it comes to books, people are increasingly leaving the physical world behind.
Sales of actual paper books dropped last year while eBook sales more than
doubled. And something similar is happening with movies and music. Think about
it. When was the last time you bought a polycarbonate plastic disk from your
favorite band?
All
of this has critic Bob Mondello thinking about what our lives will look like
when the things we love aren't visible anymore.
(SOUNDBITE
OF MUSIC)
BOB
MONDELLO, BYLINE: When Hollywood imagines the future, from "Star
Trek" to "Avatar," it tends to picture living spaces as sterile
and characterless, without cultural clues to the person living there, no record
library, no Hemingway on bookshelves, often, no bookshelves. And here we are
catching up to that vision, less and less real world clutter as we stream
everything on the Web.
(SOUNDBITE
OF MOVIE, "THE MATRIX")
MONDELLO:
In "The Matrix," people interact in a reassuringly cluttered, but
virtual, reality. Actual reality is barren, nothing physical to establish that
one person is different from another. It is a horror story in which humanity
has abandoned all of what makes us human.
This
fear of losing ourselves as we lose our stuff, a product of bad experiences
with technology, well, from science fiction, you'd sure think so. Broadcast TV
was brand new when the novel, "Fahrenheit 451" imagined a world that
outlawed books. Early space travel inspired the computer, HAL, and his sterile
domain in 2001 "A Space Odyssey."
But
the computer age didn't invent this. British author E.M. Forster had similar
thoughts more than a century ago. In 1909, right after writing "A Room
With A View," he penned a story about a cave without a view. "The
Machine Stops," written pre-radio, almost pre-technology, in an age of
gaslights and pianos in the parlor.
JENNIFER
MENDENHALL: A small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee. It is
lighted neither by window nor by lamp, yet it is filled with a soft radiance.
There are no musical instruments and yet this room is throbbing with melodious
sound. An armchair is in the center, by its side a reading desk. That is all
the furniture. And in the armchair sits a woman, Vashti, with a face as white
as a fungus. It is to her that the little room belongs.
MONDELLO:
There are reasons for picturing sterile environments in stories about the
future. Space travel requires eliminating things that will float around in zero
gravity. Clean lines feel modern because they contrast with the accumulated
mess of everyday existence.
But
isn't our mess what defines us as individuals? Forster thought so and figured
we'd grow isolated without it. So, a century before computer geeks, he imagined
Skype and the iPad.
MENDENHALL:
The round plate that she held in her hands began to glow. A faint blue light
shot across it, darkening to purple and, presently, she could see the image of
her son who lived on the other side of the earth and he could see her.
UNIDENTIFIED
WOMAN #1: (As Vashti) Kuno, what is it, dearest boy?
MENDENHALL:
I want to see you not through the machine, said Kuno. I see something like you
in this plate, but I do not see you. I want you to pay me a visit so that we
can meet face-to-face.
MONDELLO:
Have a little face time? The folks at Apple would recognize that. Imagine
Forster's horror if he could see people in headphones avoiding eye contact on
the street. These days, we say technology is the culprit, but Forster was
writing decades before TV created couch potatoes and his character Vashti
doesn't want to leave her little hexagonal cave. Why would she?
MENDENHALL:
For a moment, Vashti felt lonely, then the sight of her room studded with
electric buttons revived her. Buttons to call for food, for music, the button
that produced literature. And there were, of course, the buttons by which she
communicated with her friends. The clumsy system of public gatherings had been
long since abandoned.
MONDELLO:
Abandoned? For chat rooms, online dating? We're almost there. Whole
relationships can be virtual until you're in the home of a new acquaintance. At
which point, what do you do? Scan the bookshelves. Faulkner or Tom Clancy? And
on the stereo, Sinatra or the Sex Pistols?
(SOUNDBITE
OF MUSIC)
MONDELLO:
A friend told me the other day that she no longer has CDs. All her music is on
her iPod. She still has books, but she's buying fewer. Her entertainment center
overflows Disney. But when her family outgrows those DVDs, so will her living
room. Her kids will mature in a world without hard copies of things their mom's
generation used to define living spaces and tell people who they are.
Should
we fret over what's disappearing? Cool album covers, toy soldiers? Won't the
next generation be isolated without them, like Vashti, staring at screens?
MENDENHALL:
The room, though it contained nothing, was in touch with all that she cared for
in the world.
MONDELLO:
The title of E.M. Forster's story, remember, is "The Machine Stops."
It's about overreliance on devices. But as in most dystopias, technology and
the chill of the modern are stand-ins. The anxiety is age old, given voice by
artists since people first gathered in caves. It's a fear of being alone. Once
you've felt the comfort of society, you worry about losing it.
So
to remind yourself and others of how you're all connected, you gather things
around and you cling to them, not so you won't lose them or lose what makes you
you, but so you won't lose the connections they represent. The fear is of
emptiness, but of emptiness inside us, not empty rooms.
(SOUNDBITE
OF MUSIC)
MONDELLO:
I'm Bob Mondello.
(SOUNDBITE
OF MUSIC)
CORNISH:
You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.
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