Media technologies offer only new forms of loneliness across successive eras
Evidence
Sinatra’s No-One Cares (which could have been subtitled: From Penthouse to Satis House) was like pop’s take on literary modernism, an affect (rather than a concept) album, a series of takes on a particular theme – disconnection from a hyper-connected world – with Frank the ageing sophisticate adrift in the McLuhan wasteland of the late 50s, Elvis already here, the Beatles on the way (who is the ‘no-one’ who doesn’t care if not the teen audience who have found new objects of adoration?), the telephone and the television offering only new ways to be lonely. So This is Goodbye is like a globalised update of No-One Cares, its images of ‘hotel lobbies’, ‘shopping malls we’ll never see again’ and ‘homes for sale’ sketching a world in a state of permanent impermance (should we say precarity?). — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 493
Categorization
- ADDENDUM: Supports the article on complaints about immodesty/political signaling only loosely; stronger as extension of the book’s lost-futures and media-privatisation threads.
- XREF: connects to: Chronic travel sickness can complement rather than oppose homesickness in modern music — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 495; Digital media isolate people from contrary opinion which face-to-face life once forced — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 118; Modern communications technology has fundamentally reshaped human consciousness and social relations (+5 more)
Broader Connections
- Richer communication media produce more trust and social solidarity
#contradicts(0.92) — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 583 - Digital media isolate people from contrary opinion which face-to-face life once forced
#exemplifies(0.85) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 118 - Trivial social media posts create emotional intimacy through ambient awareness
#contradicts(0.80) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 562 - The Internet ended the social isolation that once constrained racists
#exemplifies(0.80) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 982 - Social media spaces create an anonymous intimacy that is neither public nor private
#contradicts(0.78) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 45 - Modern communications technology has fundamentally reshaped human consciousness and social relations
#qualifies(0.75)