David Foster Wallace, discussing his book Infinite Jest and the addictive qualities of TV and the Internet:"The technology's gonna get better and better at doing what it does, which is seduce us into being incredibly dependent on it, so that advertisers can be more confident that we will watch their advertisements. And as a technology system, it's amoral.
It doesn't...have a responsibility to care about us one whit more than it does: It's got a job to do. The moral job is ours. You know, Why am I watching five hours a day of this? I mean, why am I getting 75 percent of my calories from candy? I mean, that's something that a little tiny child would do, and that would be all right. But we're postpubescent, right? Somewhere along the line, we're supposed to have grown up...
I think one of the reasons that I feel empty after watching a lot of TV, and one of the things that makes TV seductive, is that it gives the illusion of relationships with people. It's a way to have people in the room talking and being entertaining, but it doesn't require anything of me. I mean, I can see them, they can't see me. And they're there for me, and I can receive from the TV, I can receive entertainment and stimulation. Without having to give anything back but the most tangential kind of attention. And that is very seductive.
The problem is it's also very empty. Because one of the differences about having a real person there is that number one, I've gotta do some work. Like, he pays attention to me, I gotta pay attention to him. You know, I watch him, he watches me. The stress level goes up.
...as the Internet grows, and as our ability to be linked up...at a certain point, we're gonna have to build some machinery inside our guts, to help us deal with this. Because the technology is just gonna get better and better and better. And it's gonna get easier and easier, and more convenient, and more and more pleasurable to be alone with images on a screeen, given to us by people who do not love us but want our money. Which is all right. In low doses, right? But if that's the basic main staple of your diet, you're gonna die. In a meaningful way, you're gonna die."
It's difficult not to agree with DFW. While distraction in measured doses can be a beautiful thing, the cumulative presence of TV, Internet, gaming, cell phones, texting, IMing, smart phones, social media, and sundry other technologies has undeniably altered the ways in which we relate to other humans. I have lately acutely observed the flattened, sometimes surreal quality of relating online versus the depth of experience one feels in 3-D (aka “real” life).
Online communication adds a layer of abstraction that seems to confound my brain. There is the person to whom one is speaking, then there becomes this avatar, the recipient of the email, who, while resembling this person, is solely a cognitive/verbal entity. The physical field is completely wiped out, and the emotional field clouded. Online relating brings with it much space for interpretation, in a way that face-to-face encounters often do not. In person, we read people’s energy more quickly than we do their words, and in fact process what they say via how they look and how they say it. Actual verbal content has been proven to be just a small component in the communication process. How things are said—vocal intonation, gesture, pitch, volume, phrasing—holds much more sway. All of this is absent in virtual communication.
Email and the Internet have also impacted the length of our relationships to others. Virtual communication makes it very easy to jump ship—to move on to the next person, the next topic, to blow people off, to not spend a lot of time working through issues. There are simply too many other options, and we lose patience quickly. Like a baby averts its eyes from anything that disturbs it, we can easily perform a few mouse clicks and the offensive entity has been excised. And if I can’t see you, see the upset you may feel when I dismiss you, then it doesn’t exist, right?
So if we in our world allow ourselves to be passively entertained, and accept a dehumanizing medium as our predominant form of communication, over time, what is the end result? While Foster Wallace’s conclusion feels somewhat extreme at this moment in time, it's certainly not inconceivable.
“ …each generation has different things that force the generation to grow up. Maybe for our grandparents it was World War Two. For us, it’s gonna be that at…a certain point…we’re either gonna have to put away childish things and discipline ourself about how much time do I spend being passively entertained? And how much time do I spend doing stuff that actually isn’t all that much fun minute by minute, but that builds certain muscles in me as a grown-up and a human being? And if we don’t do that then (a) as individuals, we’re gonna die, and (b) the culture’s gonna grind to a halt. Because we’re gonna get so interested in entertainment that we’re not gonna want to do the work that generates the income that buys the products that pays for the advertising that disseminates the entertainment. It just seems to be like it’s gonna be this very cool thing. Where the country could very well shut down and die, and it won’t be anybody else doin’ it to us, we will have done it to ourselves.”
I highly recommend all of David Lipsky's fascinating book, which documents a 5-day road trip taken by the Rolling Stone correspondent and David Foster Wallace in 1996. It's both a compelling conversation and a glimpse into the writer's thought processes, interspersed with plenty of humor, humanity and bits of profundity. We're fortunate to have this transcript as a glimpse into Wallace's amazing mind.
