On Being Ambivalent About The 21st Century

Bill Keller's occasional column in the Times' magazine is great because it reveals his anxieties about living in the 21st century. His latest, about Twitter specifically and social media more generally, reveals the conundrum in which he finds himself. Keller realizes the Times needs social media so it can reinvent itself and remain relevant because these are now the dominant means of content distribution, thus providing their value. But the nature by which information is consumed via them inherently compromises the Times' quality because their inherently ephemeral character undercut the rigor and sternness that define the paper.

Keller writes, "My inner worrywart wonders whether the new technologies overtaking us may be eroding characteristics that are essentially human: our ability to reflect, our pursuit of meaning, genuine empathy, a sense of community connected by something deeper than snark or political affinity." Gawker, not surprisingly, responded with a snarky critique of the column specifically and Keller more generally. It probably realized the irony of this, but of course that didn't stop it. I, however, happen to agree. The iPhone makes me lonely. Grooming my Facebook account makes me wonder why I do it. I don't enjoy staring at a screen all the time because it's an isolating experience, not a shared one. The Internet is marvelously complex for the simultaneous profundity and superficiality of content, the former always battling the latter. One victor, as Keller suggests, appears to be disingenuousness.

This is also what Jonathan Franzen mined in his recent op-ed column, where he deconstructued the Facebook phenomenon of "liking" something. He wrote this Facebook feature has transformed "the verb 'to like' from a state of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse, from a feeling to an assertion of consumer choice." Merely liking something, he goes on, is narcissistic and isolating because it's meant to protect yourself from true emotion; it allows you to show a brief, manicured glimpse of your personality without committing it. Loving something or someone, however, is much more complicated because it's messy and flawed but ultimately redeeming for its complexity. (Oddly enough, this essay is an excerpt from his speech at Kenyon College's commencement. The material is rather dark for the occasion, but then, I remember his speech at my graduation wasn't very uplifting either. There was a line about becoming comfortable with the person you see in the mirror because you're not going anywhere.)

Too often the 21st century is about tidy packages or ones that go terribly awry; a desire to divulge that in the end, doesn't reveal much (though I'm certainly guilty of this with this blog); simple spoonfuls instead of complex ones; and a desire to connect that often proves fleeting. Perhaps I'm projecting my own opinions, but I think two of my favorite professional writers, Keller and Franzen, share this too. Keller also deserves credit for saying yesterday, when he announced his departure as the Times' executive editor, that he's not going to write a book detailing his years at the helm. Not everything needs to be shared. Sometimes that makes it more meaningful.

Update: More on this subject from Franzen, in his most recent piece in the New Yorker, about "Robinson Crusoe," the Pacific Island where apparently the novel was set, and David Foster Wallace: "The blackberry on Robinson Crusoe Island was like the conquering novel, yes, but it seemed to me no less like the Internet, that BlackBerry-borne invasive, which, instead of mapping the self onto a narrative, maps the self onto the world. Instead of the news, my news. Instead of a single football game, the splintering of 15 different football games into personalized fantasy-league statistics. Instead of "The Godfather," "My Cat's Funny Trick." The individual run amok, everyman a Charlie Sheen. With "Robinson Crusoe," the self had become island; and now, it seemed, the island was becoming the world."