Too much attention to where we have been can mean that we are perhaps missing beguiling possibilities just around the corner.
It’s a natural impulse to look to the immediate past to make judgments about the future. In a sense it is all we have. And yet for all the changing norms affecting how we connect with each other, it’s still too easy to become wedded to selective memories and romanticized histories.
I seem to recall ever-widening eyes while older members of my family rhapsodized about their own childhoods on horseback, or camped out for the summer near the family’s not very successful silver mine. The stories seem to come from a Technicolor world filled with older family members that were larger than life. One could imagine that they were not that different from those all-American stoics who patiently guided the Smith family through the giddy summer of 1904 in MGM’s Meet Me in Saint Louis.
By contrast, my adolescence seemed to unspool around a far less exciting existence seemingly shot in grainy black and white. To be sure, I have sense colorized it, especially the bits that took our family back to the wonderful mountains not too far from that old mine. But I still marvel at the elders I’ve constructed who lived unpredictable lives in fabulous times.
There’s a point to all of this. We tend to create memories that are equal parts history and fantasy. After all, we are not digital devices. Accuracy of recall is a strength of hard drives, not humans. We often select what are perceived simplicities of the past, especially forms of family intimacy that probably overstate the closeness we desire and the tensions we’d like to forget.
It’s worth remembering that too much attention to the receding landscape in the rear view mirror can mean that we are perhaps missing beguiling possibilities just around the corner.
It’s inevitable that new forms will rise and challenge the dominance of previously invincible media.
Nowhere is this more true than in our preferred ways of connecting with others. We know how and when connecting works for us. We understand our strengths, even as we puzzle over new digital platforms and their peculiar rules of engagement. But as the great media theorist Marshall McLuhan cautioned, media types and forms of address evolve ceaselessly and irrevocably, as relentless in changing the landscape as the flow of volcanic magma from Hawaii’s Mount Kilauea.
There’s no going back. Old forms of media don’t necessarily die out. They co-exist or become transformed. Think of radio today, sixty-five years after television captured its place as the nation’s preferred medium. Radio is still with us and doing reasonably well. But it’s inevitable that new forms will rise and challenge previously dominant media. In his day Plato decried the growing interest in written texts. Similarly, John Philip Sousa was none too happy to have his music imperfectly captured on noisy shellac recordings. And yet the work of both is alive because of the “new” media they reluctantly anticipated.
The challenge is to get the mix right for an individual life. We need to be more conscious of the expansion of social media and cell technology have cost us and what they’ve allowed. Choices must be made because our lives can easily be trashed and overwhelmed by media distractions.
One example: It’s easy to poke fun at online dating services. They are sold to us mostly by peddling notions of romantic love that haven’t been in vogue since the 50s. And yet just when we think we couldn’t push ourselves any further from authentic personal relationships, a friend beams with pride over the new person who has entered their life through a digital porthole. Cole Porter didn’t write love songs about online romance. But that doesn’t mean that it can’t happen.
The unintended audience is the new norm. And with it, we have burdened ourselves with the worry ofnot knowing where our communications might surface.
Nothing represents the challenges of connecting with others better than the ease with which a person can use newer media to eavesdrop on messages not intended for them. The digital revolution has led to popular media platforms favoring content that started as private communications. Some of this visual and textual material is used as digital clickbait, feeding our appetites for the kinds of gossip that used to exist mostly in supermarket tabloids. Some intrudes more awkwardly, as when a forwarded e-mail goes to more eyes than it was supposed to.
In simpler times it was possible but awkward to listen to someone’s conversations through a wall or a shared party line. Broadly speaking, our secrets were more easily kept. Physical spaces usually created privacy. And we didn’t have access to tiny recording technologies such as smartphones, or permeable channels of communication such as social media. Privacy was an attribute an individual could choose. It made life easier. It was not something we planned to give up as citizens swept up into the digital world. After all, if we wanted a peek into the private lives of others, we had theater and then film. Even in Shakespeare’s day audiences could spend hours witnessing the sordid backstories of Europe’s kings and queens.
The absence of the fourth wall is key to drama’s attraction. But what was once mostly limited to the theater is now a feature of everyday life, as cameras and mics invade most spaces. Few television police procedurals or legal narratives would be complete without the exposure of private communications that somehow contradicts claims of innocence. They reflect the fact that real life investigative bureaucracies regularly seek permission to eavesdrop, using off the shelf technologies that now make digital searches relatively easy.
The right to access personal data is at the core of the current legal battle that pits Apple against the federal government. The FBI wants to hack data from the cellphones of criminal suspects, like those who murdered innocent citizens in San Bernardino last year.
In recent decades we have added to the expectation that there is entertainment value in witnessing events not originally intended for public view. Most reality television shows gain attention by using the camera to capture moments of private humiliation or subterfuge. Think of the hapless business people who open their professional lives to public view in exchange for help and cash from reality “stars” like chef Gordon Ramsey or hotel consultant Anthony Melchiorri. Add in a range of other factors, including the natural habit of the young to be careless in their monitoring of their digital posts, and it’s easy to see how a multitude of messages can quickly verge out of their lanes. Remember the turning point in the 2012 presidential election? A private fundraising event hosted by Mitt Romney was secretly recorded by a hotel employee. In his spiel to potential contributors Romney wrote off much of the nation as lazy and unreachable, writing off his electoral chances at the same time.
Privacy was an attribute an individual could choose. It made life easier. It was not something we planned to give up as citizens swept up into the digital world.
It is now the rare individual who has managed to hold on to the presumptive right touted in many European countries to not be observed.
All of this is a reminder that as rhetorical creatures we are less able to select our own audiences. There is no longer a clear connection between who we wish to address and who actually receives our messages. An assumption that others can eavesdrop into personal and professional communications complicates what used to be a source’s prerogative to clearly target receivers without unwanted blowback from outsiders.
So the unintended audience is the new norm. And with it we have burdened ourselves with the additional worry of not knowing where our communications might surface.
