Technology, Pop-Culture and the Examined Life

In The Conduct of Life, the cultural historian and critic Lewis Mumford speculates that, "ideally, each of us has two lives: our public life of daily activity—earning a living, raising a family—plus a private life created within our thoughts as we examine and evaluate our actions"

But in the article linked here the author Ken Isaacs of Popular Science talks about the idea of creating a place plastered with hundreds of images as that private place.

My argument would be that instead of a huge dungeons and dragons form covered in images, we'd do better to look for a beautiful calming structure in which to focus. Alternately, using a simple blog or microblogging platforms such as soup.io might serve that function as well.  In some, twitter for example, the public and inner lives cross. I wonder what  Mumford would have made of this phenomenon.

While in Isaacs example - click on image for large view - he uses photos torn from magazines showcasing popular culture the good news is that it's no longer the seventies and we can focus on our laptop if we need a plethora of pop images.

The world of twitter going by or the images in a fickriver or soup.io public page can easily serve up content if we want more stimulation.

In essence, the idea of bombarding our brain with pictures as a way to consider our lives seems counterintuitive to the goal of immersing ourselves in our own thoughts and inner reactions to our own actions.

The thing is - some people are now so used to 24 hour stimulation they can't stand to be alone. And I'm not sure we'd really feel much solitude in Isaacs decahydron of photo stimulation in any case.

And in the end a scrapbook filled with photos chronicling our lives and a pop up dome like a children's play house could serve the purpose if we truly, as Greta Garbo, "want to be alone."

Comments

[Scot]

Susan,

Wonderful post. I live two lives as you described, and when I get home, it's usually me and my cat. I work during the day being in service to others, but when I get home I pursue what I enjoy most: reading and writing. To have one of those geodesic tents would be really cool to enjoy what I love doing most.

Scot

[Martha Marshall]

Good post. I'm finding that most of the time the web satisfies my need as an artist for social interaction and visual stimulation. When I want to be alone, all I have to do is go paint. And I don't even have to wear makeup for any of it!

Note: I need more of your twitter expertise. I'm just barely limping along there.