I’ll tell you what’s in vogue at the moment — “technological development”, and all its associated buzzwords.
Everyone wants to be so “current”… suddenly everything is new advertising / new marketing / new media trends… new means of consumption. ‘Hyperconnectivity’. ‘Co-presence’. ‘Non-linearity’. ‘User-generated content’. ‘Paradigm shift’. ‘Innovation’. ‘mouse and keyboard are becoming obselete’. Jesus.
Next we may have “hyper-interactive neo-tribalistic niche communities of globally-integrated cultural commonality spectrums.” Please may we have this one?
Anyway what I am trying to say is that the result of this “new wave” of tech-obsession is tension. Lots of tension.
On one hand, this is the new millenium (woa man). We’re all shiny people living in the exact centre of a bustling metropolis. We step out of our silver Lexus, don ridiculously large sunglasses, smile and whip out our silver mobile phone to start another day of fruitful business. At lunch we sit in a perfectly manicured park, open our silver laptops and smile because the park has Optus internet connectivity. Then at the end of the day we retire to our apartments and relax in a bathtub of iPods.
On the other hand, computers and internets and iProducts are for nerds. And this is never good.
Technology can be hard to understand — it can take time to become familiar with. And things that take time to understand are never good. Such things include “Science”, “Books”, and “Dungeons & Dragons (the board game)” *shudder*. Knowing about computers or science or D&D (God help you) would imply that you do not spend your life partying on a perpetual basis. It means that one day, you must have said “Hey Corey, this party’s been sick man, but I’ve been here for 45 days and I should go home and study… got a science test tomorrow or some shit. sucks man.”
And as Corey will tell you, this makes you a nerd.
Myspacing the entire population of Melbourne did not make Corey a nerd. This is because
a. He is wearing sunglasses. And
b. He myspaced them in order to start a riot against the police, forcing the police to deploy a helicopter and hence lose money.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. There is a core reason why the internet/cyberspace/computers/technology must all be nerdy. There is a reason why the “real world” is the jock bully while the “virtual world” is a helpless-sissy-victim.
REASON BEING: Sex does not exist in cyberspace.
(alright alright it sortve does. But saying that Pamela Anderson visited your computer screen last night is not something you typically brag about).
THUS: “cool”, as a measure of one’s status in a social context, becomes defunct. There’s nothing to brag about in cyberspace. “omg man I just met this babe online last night and we started cybering and stuff. She was probably a 50 year old dude but whatever yea. I switched on my webcam but she said she didn’t have one and that was alright. Yea man it was sick I just pretended it was Pamela Anderson”.
When people say “you have no life”, they are meaning “I infer from your incessant Wow-playing that you lack a fulfilling sex life”.
Anyway, shocking revelations aside, what emerges from this ‘tension’ I’ve been talking about is a ‘leaking’ between ‘cool’ and ‘nerd’. Certain technologies and websites and programs slip under Corey’s radar and become socially acceptable.
Myspace leaked early. Although it involved ‘html’ and other scary concepts, it was all about “social networking” — in other words “Myspace is the new booty call”. They’d found a way to bring ‘social status’ to the internet. It was a dating website in disguise… a dating website that didn’t seem desperate. You just had a space. And if some babes decided to visit your space and then come round for a sleepover, well that’s cool too bro.
Then there’s music / movies. Torrents, Napster, Limewire… it all becomes cool because we can use it to listen to MGMT or make Metallica very angry. Yeea
(I confess I only bought three of your albums. Please do not hurt me)
Now, about 6 years on, we are in an interesting new situation in terms of this ‘leakage’. The explosion of Nintendo Wii sales has popularised the otherwise nerdcore pastime of video gaming. You can play videogames and work on your thighs simultaneously. In other words “This video game will help me get laid”. Why did they not think of this before? If playing Starcraft had worked on your muscle tone… well.. nerds would probably rule the world right now. The average Australian gamer is 30 or 40 or something.
Will this process of leaking and normalising stop? Or do we end up in a situation where xhtml is deemed the sexiest language on Earth and the MCG is filled with people watching Carlton and Geelong duke it out in a game of DotA…
would be interesting.
