Benjamin Barber’s chapter on “Infantilizing Consumers” is stuffed full of interesting points regarding the current trivial and childish elements of our culture. When discussing our preoccupation with “Fast over Slow,” Barber notes that “we are now hurried time travelers as malcontent with the idea that ‘now’ can contain our anarchic temporality as we are with the idea that a particular space can contain our spastic bodies (as our gadgets liberate us from fixed spaces)” (p. 99). It’s as if everyone is so caught up with ‘being’ in as many places as possible—through the connectivity of our smartphones—that our physical selves are stuck in a form of limbo, never fully engaged with our immediate surroundings. We live half (or more) of our lives through the screens on our technology, simultaneously ‘being’ everywhere and nowhere. Patience is becoming a lost virtue; like machines, we strive to be as efficient as possible in our daily activities. Time spent waiting is time wasted when we are hustling and bustling from the moment we wake up to the moment we fall asleep. According to Barber, “where once intelligence was equated with wisdom and deliberation, with the deliberate privileging of slowness and the intentional expenditure of time’s wealth, today smart is too often about quick” (p. 100). Why deliberate on a task when you could just get it done quickly? This is a startling question that has become deeply rooted in our everyday activities.
Furthermore, Barber says, “Kids will instant message for hours as if they have but seconds; the mad seconds accumulate, leaving them plenty of time to compose sonnets: but they content themselves with sentence fragments” (Barber, 99). Imagine the literary prowess of our generation if all the time we spent on (usually superfluous) texting, tweeting, and commenting was instead spent on meaningful writing. While texting is a convenient form of communication, it loses its value of efficiency when we spend our entire day absorbed in it. Instant messaging does not equate to ‘constant’ messaging, but that’s what it’s become in our society, especially among the younger generations.
Barber continues, moving on to the subject of today’s news: “The news cycle now moves faster than the news, with twenty-four-hours-a-day cable services and blogs demanding more content that the lumbering real world can provide” (p. 101). After browsing the stories on the Yahoo! website for a few minutes, this assertion became painfully obvious. Over half of the stories available were completely trivial and meaningless, such as “Kim Kardashian Goes Full Frontal!” and “Jennifer Aniston Uncomfortable Filming New Movie.” Of course, one of the top 3 stories on the site was regarding the Ebola “epidemic” that we are currently experiencing—a surgeon with Ebola is coming to the US for care. “With the news cycle outracing the news, the news must recycle the few legitimate ‘big stories’ it has” (Barber, 101). I’ve been completely amazed at how much coverage Ebola has gotten over the last few months. It’s been blown so far out of proportion that it’s almost comical. I believe less than 5 people have been diagnosed in the US (out of 316 million), but with the coverage it’s gotten, you would think Americans were dropping like flies. ESPN is guilty of this ‘over-coverage’ too: I know more about Lebron James’ personal life than I know about most of my own family members’. And with so many outlets to push the “news” today (TV, internet, social media, radio, etc.), it’s difficult to escape the constant repetitive triviality.
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