Has anyone else realized that with all of the information let available by the ever-growing search engine trend which allows access to unlimited information, the human population is becoming severely uncreative and anti-intellectual?
Seriously, Albert Einstein would have given his right arm to have access to this available mainstream knowledge, and all we use it for is messaging people on facebook which i could conduct the same conversation in person.
sorry for my rant. i am guilty of this too, i had this unnerving desire to jump on google to search whether or not rob pattinson was getting fired from twilight, which apparently he may because of his drinking and love triangle with cast members, while kristen smokes pot. yes, i learned this from my trivial google search.
And yes, i am completely aware of the irony i am creating by posting this rant in text-form on these alleged myspace and facebook websites, however, i do have to assert that these types of developments allow for communication among the mass-media. we are simply using it in a negative way. theoretically, think about how you would tell a friend about a party tonight if you did not have a cell phone or the internet. see? you would physically have to walk yourself over to their house, everyones you wanted to invite. or send them an invitation letter through the mail, which could take up to 3 days, thus you would have to plan in advance if you simply wanted to hang out with your friends that night. planning in advance is dying just as the communication skills anyone under 40 is lacking. no one talks face to face anymore, and if you notice, even if they do no one makes eye contact. what becomes ironic is that while holding a conversation people tend to be looking at their phones pretending, or actually talking to someone else, either that or playing a game. i have no idea what it is, like if you are not seen looking at your phone while you're in public, one may envision you as anti-social or disconnected to the world. very extreme i know, but pay attention to the next time you feel awkward or as an example, you and someone else are sitting together at dinner, your partner gets up to use the restroom. you look around at everyone else talking to one another and all at once you feel as if everyone is staring at you. you feel that you need to be making conversation, because heavens forbid you are alone now. so what does everyone instinctively do now? yes, they make the reach for their cell phones. and what i find even more amusing, most of them are not even doing anything but looking through old text messages or playing bubble pop. even more laughable, is when your partner comes back, the left-alone person feels almost mad at the one who caused so much anxiety that they will sit there still pretending to text or do something equally unimportant on the cellular telephones. i admit, yes I've done this, but i equally "forget" my cell phone at homes sometimes just to see how i react in a world without them. and yes, i usually just borrow someone elses if i need to get a hold of someone. this phenomenon has been plaguing me for years.
i digress, as i was looking through what i have just written, i became irate when the word "google" was underlined in the squiggly red line, which means its spelled wrong. but when i right-clicked on it to see what my computer brain thought google should be spelled like, the choices were Google, goggle, googly, and go ogle. everything is wrong with those choices. one, why is "Google" as a proper noun now in the computer dictionary, did i miss that? when did Google become a literative word, while most other brand names are still unrecognized? second, googly? why is that even a word? and go ogle, what is ogle? i guess i shouldn't have to deliberate the adding of Google into the online speller, while googly is also there.
anyway, I'll go back to my previous convictions of the human race. i am not excluded by this by any means, however i am consciously thinking about this, so that has to give me something. why has everyone stopped trying to learn, and those who do somehow perceived as "uncool." i use that term loosely, because i happen to find intellectual people extremely "cool," but for the vast majority of people I've come across, ones who do well at school are never praised (except by those of equal academic success) and are almost shunned as "not able to have a conversation with." But ironically, this label only means "will not be a fun partier." Being mature has somehow become a concept only a select few adhere to, and must face the choice of being mature, or falling into Bentham's belief that pleasure is measurable and pigs are fully content constantly. so, should i spend my nights reading and obtaining knowledge which will ultimately make me into a more open-minded, creative, cocktail party ready individual? or should i spend them consuming great amounts of alcohol with some of my best friends? oh if only there was a way to have a mixture, like having a debate about whether or not you taste water in the basement with 5 of my friends. something like that. because if you ever notices, at parties, no one says anything. i mean theres talking, a lot of talking, but all of this consist of melodrama and where they plan to go next. even more interesting, and yes i am convicted of this as well, the pseudo-intellectual types of people will actually pick up a book when pop culture admits them to. like, reading twilight, became cool. so every non-reader in the world ran and bought the book after the movie came out. i do admit, i was sucked into the obsession as well as every 16-twenty something year old girl. but you will never, ever see a whole group of people arguing over who should play the lonely poet in Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, the newest blockbuster hit in theaters November 20th! because lets face it, great pieces of literature will never be turned into movies, and if they do, they will never be media-crazed. i say this because Orwell's 1984 was turned into a movie which was never released in the US, and just recently atlas shrugged was announced to be in production with brad pitt as Hank and angelina jolie as Dagny. However, i guarantee that most people will go see the movie, and either emphasize the great performance by angelina or hate the movie entirely because there were no car chases. Because great literature keeps the messages bound up in their spines, as the unbearable lightness of being did, although the movie was an obnoxious 171 minutes long, the screen-writers obviously knew the importance of the movie, however, hollywood knew no one would go see it unless mega-stars like Daniel Day Lewis played Thomas, and Juliette Binoche played Tereza. the movie industry will however go untouched today because i admit, they are doing a far better job at creating movies that i like. anyway, don't get me wrong, i love people, i do. but when people listen to pop country songs that thank the soldiers who died so that they could sit on a friday night with a cold beer, i become a little perturbed that this is what people consider to be art. and as the postmodern era continues on the basis that "art is formed under the conscious awareness that it is, in fact, art" people are taking this concept a little too extreme. we should have learned that when warhols printing press pictures of soup cans became "art" we went too far.
so, i must cut this ranting manifesto off as i have just made plans to go drink coffee at dennys and discuss nothing in particular with some friends. yes... i know.
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