"It's hard not to develop an aural antsiness when YouTube is there for the flighty browsing, iPods for the impatient shuffling. Meanwhile, Spotify and every other streaming service allows us to take for granted a song being there for our ears when we demand it. In short, our restless listening might mean we're in danger of becoming careless listeners, too.
(...) Perhaps we need just a bit more reverence when it comes to listening.
(...) Over the last few years, theatre in this country has realised the heightened awareness that odd venues and small-scale performance instill in audiences." (Hermione Hoby for The Observer)
Hoby thinks 'precious' is a word in need of rescuing, whether it's about music, theatre or any other art. In a time where everything that can be reproduced digitally seems to be there for the taking, anytime and anywhere, she might just be right.
In the same issue of The Observer, Geoff Dyer (writer) claims that 'Googling has drained some of the purpose from his life'. No less.
"Then there's the outsourcing of memory. From the age of 16, I got into the habit of memorising passages of poetry and compiling detailed indexes in the back of books of prose. So if there was a passage I couldn't remember, I would spend hours going through my books, seeking it out. Now, in what TS Eliot, with great prescience, called 'this twittering world', I just google the key phrase of the half-remembered quote. Which is great, but it's drained some of the purpose from my life."
But there's relief too, from Colin Blakemore (neurobiologist):
"It's curious that some of the most vociferous critics of the internet are the very sorts of people who are benefiting most from this wonderful, liberating, organic extension of the human mind. They are academics, scientists, scholars and writers, who fear that the extraordinary technology that they use every day is a danger to the unsophisticated.
They underestimate the capacity of the human brain to capitalise on new ways of storing and transmitting information. When I was at school I learned by heart great swathes of poetry and chunks of the Bible, not to mention page after page of scientific textbooks. What a waste of my neurons, all clogged up with knowledge that I can now obtain with the click of a mouse."
Related issues in my opinion. When everything is available at a mouseclick, you can either consume what's right before you until you drown in middle-of-the-road entertainment or use the advantage of unlimited choice (the far end of the long tail) and sophisticated filtering to find hidden gems. To uncover preciousness. Yes, this can be as time consuming as going through your bookcase to find a certain line of prose used to be.
Who's with me?
