Jonathan Harris is both an artist and a computer scientist. That must mean that both hemispheres of his brain are on fire.
In this video, Harris shares what he sees as the four big cultural trends brought to us by the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
Have we reached terminal velocity in how compressed our communication can become? We’ve gone from written letters to 140 characters. Where to from here? And, as a result, do we suddenly crave depth in our communication?
When we do publish our thoughts, we expect that it will be instantly swept up by the sheer volume of posts. Lost. We do not expect our words, our memories to remain etched in time.
Plus, thanks to Pinterest and Facebook sharing, we rarely bother to create something new. We curate what we like, share the works of other people, be it our friends or George Takei’s latest post. Where has our creativity gone?
And finally, we are caught up in self promotion. Our online personas are carefully crafted to be a more stunning version of awesome than we actually are. Our digital selves are an endless, self advertisement.
These are the trends that are shaping our culture, both online and off.
So, the question remains, is digital culture an oxymoron?
