Memory vs. Moment: Scattered Musings on Social Media and Smartphones
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Memory vs
moment: legacy vs life. We can choose to spend our mortal lives striving to solidify
the wise fading whispers we leave behind in death.
Social media
brings us closer together. Sometimes true, often debatable. What is without
debate, however, is its power to remove time and space, allowing us to
communicate irrespective of distance, from almost any place on the planet to
another. This means that with great battery life and a strong signal we can
stay connected with our online communities, whilst alone, in the middle of
nowhere. But we live and breathe time and space, so it needn't be replaced in
all cases.
We can
become so absorbed by social media sites; sucked in by screens of increasing
size, that we wholly forget our surroundings. Our real world becomes the
T.A.R.D.I.S -like, paradoxical light that flutters back and forth, and left and
right from the little windows of our phone screens, pecking dreams and dropping
seeds. And before we know it, we become needy, and clutch our phones greedily
with our hands to our chests and with our eyes to our minds.
Sometimes
we need numinosity to survive; sometimes, it’s good to know we’re just a drop
in the ocean. It creates the curiosity to experience and travel, to try to
unravel all that there is that we don’t know or understand. But now the oceans
can be pooled in the palms of our hands, along with the sun-drenched sands of
distant lands that used to sit, quenched and wave-kissed. Now digitalized and
confined by ergonomic design, we can fit all this inside plastic, pixels and light
waves. We turn a bright day’s sun rays into frown-prompting glare, or, with
some appreciation, into the pallid reflection of a snapped imitation of ‘the
moment’, and where we see fit, filter it for Instagram, so someone can ‘like’ it,
and then comment: “great pic, man”.
All this
held in our hands. And so now that’s where we search and strive and live, in a
hand book. But only when we use it to guide us and not to define us, are we
unlocking its positive potential. What good is a stencil if not for the pencil
to fill it in? Is the preservation of memory worth disrupting the moment? I
suppose sometimes it is, and I suppose sometimes the taking of a photo is a
lovely memory in itself, but surely it cannot complement every situation.
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Social media and smartphones present us with a choice between memory and moment. I know this may
seem simplistic, and I acknowledge that social media and smartphones do have so many practical
purposes; of course it is great thing to be able to freely communicate. The
ability to record, capture and store our sights and thoughts can be brilliantly
useful. Technology has allowed us to breathe new life into the way we preserve our
memories. But no one has given us a user guide, we are the first of our kind,
and so it is necessary to shine a light on the implications of this new global behaviour,
just in case, without realizing it, we are compromising something we hadn't
I do truly
look forward to the day in my old age where I scroll all the way back to my
Facebook birth, enjoy the day to day conversations of my youth, and relish the
atmosphere of my formative years. But this begs another question; can you
die of nostalgia? Will it be too much?
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It makes me
think of long running TV shows and the way we can literally see the actors
aging season to season. Now as much as these age comparisons aid the content of
Buzz Feed, just imagine how it would feel to have that amount of access to
hours and hours of footage of your younger self. I’m sure re-runs must have
brought some to tears-the bitter sweet kind.
We all have times we remember much more
clearly than others, times that seem so complete in our minds we can almost
journey back. Normally old home videos reflect these in volume and exclusivity,
popping up here and there at funny moments and special occasions, deservedly immortalized.
But now there is no prestige to the sharp memories that stick out in stark
detail of their own accord, because we have had so much room record.
But again,
maybe this isn't a bad thing, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Just
remember, life is to run with the moment, before capturing the memories.
Leo Donnelly
Ever wondered what would happen if you gave a half-crazed, semi-concussed, unstoppable maverick a platform to write about social media? Follow him @LeoAtSMF
Memory vs. Moment: Scattered Musings on Social Media and Smartphones
Reviewed by Unknown
on
Thursday, April 09, 2015
Rating:
Reviewed by Unknown
on
Thursday, April 09, 2015
Rating:
Unknown
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