It's not an Either-Or Choice

The popularity of the Internet and social media has triggered a reaction from many, albeit still a very small minority, who have made “digital detox”, “disconnection”, and “unplugging” buzzwords in their criticism of the virtual world we live in.

Nathan Jurgenson took a look at this reaction and wrote this is what the naysayers feel:

“Once upon a pre-digital era, there existed a golden age of personal authenticity, a time before social-media profiles when we were more true to ourselves, when the sense of who we are was held firmly together by geographic space, physical reality, the visceral actuality of flesh.”

But he calls this view of how the world was pre-Internet as “fairytale”:

“ According to this popular fairytale, the Internet arrived and real conversation, interaction, identity slowly came to be displaced by the allure of the virtual — the simulated second life that uproots and disembodies the authentic self in favor of digital status-posturing, empty interaction, and addictive connection.”

Diane Lewis questions who decides what’s OK or an overdose:

“The question of who adjudicates the distinction between fantasy and reality, and how, is perhaps at the crux of moral panics over immoderate media consumption.”

But is this really an either-or choice? As Susan Sontag wrote in Against Interpretation:

“If I had to choose between the Doors and Dostoyevsky, then – of course – I’d choose Dostoyevsky...But do I have to choose?”

In fact, Sontag, the patron saint of “pluralistic, polymorphous” view of culture anticipated this very debate more than 3 decades back!

“There’s no incompatibility between observing the world and being tuned into this electronic, multimedia, multi-tracked, McLuhanite world and enjoying what can be enjoyed.”

In any case, she pointed out:

“There are contradictory impulses in everything.”

I agree with Sontag’s view and can’t phrase my view better than Maria Popova who had this to say about such false either-or choices:

“It robs a writer – a person – of being able to absorb the vibrant wholeness and multiplicity of life with complete awareness, to be fully present with the world and attentive to all of its dimensions.”