We're creating and consuming content at an incredible rate. And it's getting more difficult to keep up:
What we considered best practices six months ago are passe today. Yes, social media is overwhelming, especially when there is pressure to master every new platform that comes along.
Time and space fuse in the belly of digital media, which can leave us feeling lost in the haze of our digital existence.
Douglas Copeland describes how society is converging in his review of “Gods Before Men.” It's one of the best books (and book reviews) I've read in a while:
There is a spirituality lacking in the modern world that can only be squeezed out of other, more authentic eras. And why not? It's all history and it's all at our fingertips. Hello, YouTube. Thank you, Wikipedia. Oh, that Google!
We're experiencing growing pains from the fusion of different technologies. But wait…is it growing pains or just a bad hangover from all of the crap we're consuming?
…reading this book is not unlike watching a TV show that's simultaneously happening on multiple channels, a story filmed in different eras using differing technologies, but which taken together tell the same single story, echoing and reinfecting itself.
We need to stop echoing and reinfecting ourselves in our digital bubbles. Create an alternate to alternate reality games:
We need to stop creating more closed narratives and finite tales, and instead concentrate on fragmenting the stories we already have into a million pieces and sparking the imaginations of our audiences so they want to put them back together in the way that feels right to them.
Recognize when social media becomes the great magnifier of our new reality:
Social media magnifies exactly who you are, what you stand for, and the value you deliver to your audience.
The truth comes out. And social media is the channel that unveils the truth.
I'm a fan of social media. But are there other channels to seek truth these days?
If not, what will become of us?
Annie Q. Syed argues,
How will we explain a blog in history books when this time is long gone? Did we have this social media time before but there is no record of it because the record of everything digital vanished?
How are you to imagine anything if the images are always provided for you?
How do we know when we absorb too much?
Some of us detach. Others redline.
To counteract the dark belly of digital media, we must:
Stimulate our own imagination, to cultivate our own consciousness, our own belief systems. We all need skills to defend, to preserve, our own minds.
Think. Defend. Believe.
Take concepts to the next level by adding your own thoughts. Your own perspective. Your own vision.
