If anything is going to fade, it's this particular form of nostalgia and not the connected culture.
As others have pointed out in the past, I'm old enough to remember how much the days before ubiquitous internet sucked. It was hard to connect with like minded people, hard to find and cross verify information, hard to communicate with the few people that you were close to. Everything was just hard. The internet makes all the things that are important much easier, in ways that are difficult to imagine and easy to take for granted. Nostalgia has always existed and will always exist, and for understandable reasons. I'm sure there were cavemen who said "Things were so much simpler before fire. Now it's always burn this and cook that. Who can keep up?" But it doesn't last, nostalgia gives way to convenience every time. People want to think about the past, but live in the future.
If I had to guess, Sullivan's problem isn't so much with the digital life but with the fact that he makes a living from being a media personality. When you have millions of twitter follows and facebook friends and whatever instragram has, life must be very overwhelming indeed. The PBS special on Edison last night mentioned that the inventor felt overwhelmed receiving a dozen letters per day. Poor Sullivan might get that many communications from strangers every minute. Of course he and others feel like they need to unplug from time to time. But that's the price we pay for the opportunities afforded us by such a powerful medium, especially those of us who choose to profit from a culture of attention and celebrity.
My lack of friends has created a digital Walden Pond of sorts. I don't use facebook, twitter or any software with insta/snap/what in it's name. Don't get a lot of email and few texts. I'm sure that most people are better informed, better connected and generally cooler than I am. But it's quiet here on the pond, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.
> If anything is going to fade, it's this particular form of nostalgia and not the connected culture.
I agree, and would like to add I find it odd to differentiate between a digital world, and a somehow more real world, as if the digital world isn't real. The people we interact with are real, the words that form in my head as I type them are real, and the social interactions are very much real.
Unfortunately I can't remember where I heard it first, but someone said that people on their phones all the time are not anti social, but hyper social.
As others have pointed out in the past, I'm old enough to remember how much the days before ubiquitous internet sucked. It was hard to connect with like minded people, hard to find and cross verify information, hard to communicate with the few people that you were close to. Everything was just hard. The internet makes all the things that are important much easier, in ways that are difficult to imagine and easy to take for granted. Nostalgia has always existed and will always exist, and for understandable reasons. I'm sure there were cavemen who said "Things were so much simpler before fire. Now it's always burn this and cook that. Who can keep up?" But it doesn't last, nostalgia gives way to convenience every time. People want to think about the past, but live in the future.
If I had to guess, Sullivan's problem isn't so much with the digital life but with the fact that he makes a living from being a media personality. When you have millions of twitter follows and facebook friends and whatever instragram has, life must be very overwhelming indeed. The PBS special on Edison last night mentioned that the inventor felt overwhelmed receiving a dozen letters per day. Poor Sullivan might get that many communications from strangers every minute. Of course he and others feel like they need to unplug from time to time. But that's the price we pay for the opportunities afforded us by such a powerful medium, especially those of us who choose to profit from a culture of attention and celebrity.
My lack of friends has created a digital Walden Pond of sorts. I don't use facebook, twitter or any software with insta/snap/what in it's name. Don't get a lot of email and few texts. I'm sure that most people are better informed, better connected and generally cooler than I am. But it's quiet here on the pond, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.