Technology and Isolation

http://www.npr.org/2012/02/20/147041182/our-media-ourselves-are-we-headed-for-a-matrix

As technology becomes a more convenient and efficient way to consume media, such as music, videos, and literature, we accumulate less physical objects. Some see this as a loss of identity. If you walk into someone's house, you don't see a bookshelf to tell you what they like to read. To suggest that this is a loss of identity, or that we have less individuality because we all carry laptops is ridiculous. You can look up virtually anyone you meet  on facebook and learn way more than you ever would looking at their books. In fact, they probably have their favorite books listed on their profile. The loss of objects does not represent a loss of identity, simply a shift in how we define and present our identities.

The article suggests "when it comes to the arts and entertainment, we can do without the actual object that is the object of our affection." To this I ask: When did the book become the story? When did the DVD become the movie? When did the CD become the music? None of these things are truly tangible, and the "object of my affection" is not, and never was, a disk in a box, or a stack of papers. While there is something to say for these forms and how they can be used, they are not the things we love, but the carriers of the things we love. And it turns out, the internet is a better way to transmit this information.

But the article does reach an interesting conclusion, which is that this fear of isolation, which is played out repeatedly in science fiction movies, is not related to the development of technology. The article includes sections of a sci-fi story by E.M. Forster, which predates modern developments in technology, and deals with these same issues of isolation and loss of identity. It is interesting to think that this fear is "primordial," and to see how it is used by sci-fi, and subsequently abused as a way to critique technology.