We Are All The News

Now that we're all news....

Have you noticed?

Everyone's The News. We want to transmit. That used to be the job of the media. It still is but...now we're all the media. We're all eager to broadcast what's happening as soon as we can...and we can very quickly because we all have the means...quick! Tweet that! Post that on Facebook! You take extra pride if no-one else you know has broadcast the event...it makes you feel important and...on the ball...you posted that before others...

Bad news is particularly satisfying...someone's death...not just anyone, but someone famous...perhaps someone who's only famous in a minority way. Disasters...they're good...spectacular transport crashes...natural catastrophes...mass killings...shootings...the media told you and you're compelled to relay the news to your online associates...

Before all this there was simply the news on TV and radio. Perhaps people didn't hear about the terrible thing that happened that morning until 6 o'clock at night...imagine it! Some of us remember it. We weren't the news then. We were just people going about our daily lives...oblivious to what was going on that day.

Here in the 'information megalopolis' (McLuhan) 'everyone has the best seat' (John Cage) from which to view the world...this medium (the computer) massages our egos by allowing us to feel like important contributors to the dissemination of Real Events...not just thoughts, ideas or even interpretations of events...but the events themselves...without comment, perhaps. To comment may be to soil things...stain events with our own impurities.

What is this doing to us? Is it changing the way we see the world? Are we wiser? In this electronic information environment 'We have become irrevocably involved with, and responsible for, each other' (McLuhan)...the social network...we feel a responsibility to let each other know The News? Or do we feel as if we must broadcast simply to prove that we are alive to the world? We are not only involved with each other but with The World. It is no longer enough to simply be alive; one must be alive to The News.

Broadcasting, with additional interpretation, is a substitute for action. Broadcasting is the action. We have done enough. We relayed the information. We demonstrated that we know what's going on. Ignorance is not bliss; it is ignorance of Life as portrayed by The News. To remain 'out of touch' is just that. Your finger is not on the pulse or, in many cases, the absent pulse of those involved in the latest terrible news.

Video nasties were said to desensitise the viewers to violence. Today we appear to be sensitive to all horrors happening in the world. That is how we wish to appear. And yet...from our best seat at the atrocity exhibition the good, clear, immediate view we have of it all renders it unreal. The clean medium (the lens, the filter of information in text and images) is a protective one, even in the form of film. We see, but do we feel? Briefly, perhaps, we empathise...before the next piece of news distracts us from the previous story.

Now that it is possible to appear sympathetic and caring at the touch of a key we can easily transmit that impression to others. Perhaps we feel that we should in order to appear human, as opposed to cold, heartless automatons.

We're all The News...24/7. There's little time to process what we see because more news is happening all the time. By reading this you may have missed some news. That would be disastrous...