We’ve been consuming everything. Where do we go from here?
verb /kənˈso͞om/
consumed, past participle; consumed, past tense; consumes, 3rd person singular present; consuming, present participle
- Eat, drink, or ingest (food or drink)
- - people consume a good deal of sugar in drinks
- Buy (goods or services)
- Use up (a resource)
- - these machines consume 5 percent of the natural gas in the U.S
- (esp. of a fire) Completely destroy
- - the fire spread rapidly, consuming many homes
- (of a feeling) Absorb all of the attention and energy of (someone)
We’ve become proficient at consuming every little aspect from that makes up our life. It’s becoming more and more important in today’s world to be more efficient, thing on your feet as well and understand and react faster then ever before. Although we are able to shift through a heap of information quickly and extract the essential day in and day out we are missing out on a lot of other things. We’re missing out on the “junk”.
I’m only going to present my concern regarding what i like to call “intellectual consumerism” although it is becoming more apparent how a lot of other things are shifting from an experience design to a consumerist design. I’ll briefly touch this aspect as we go along.
Video
The Tv Show has become a more intimate part of a person’s life. Compared to other moments of the TV era, the low cost of equipment necessary to deliver a high definition entertainment program has enabled the producers to generate more and more content of this type.
We’ve got a broad selection of TV shows, that manage to satisfy almost everybody looking to entertain themselves for a couple of hours. The format of this audio/visual production has been carefully crafted and is meant to deliver episodes across a couple of months each year. One of the main differences between the TV show and a Film, is the distribution of the action across a longer time line. What this does to the viewer is lock him into a repeated pattern for a couple of months. Each week the viewer is presented with another sequence of the puzzle.
The problem with this particular format is the fact that it encourages a very dangerous type of addiction. As with all audio/visual productions, the user is for the most time a passive agent. The film rolls out before him but his interaction with it is limited. He’s just being a consumer, and there is little to no time to process the images as they come.
The old substitute meant to deliver a rather similar impact to the viewer has been the book. A medium that has the ability to convey the same amount of information, but one that relies on the reader’s imagination to create the whole world around him. This interaction with the story enables the reader to think and to react to what he’s reading. Although the story controls the starting point, intermediate points and destination that the reader has to travel to unwind the action locked within the pages, the reader is actually the one controlling how everything comes to life. It’s his journey, it’s personal.
In a TV show / Movie, you’re seeing what everybody else is seeing. You’ve got little to no place left to manoeuvre the way things go, and as a result will let your brain rest and instead of analysing what is going on, you end up simply recording things as they go bye. Some will argue and say that whenever they watch a tv show that’s the end result they are looking for and will get trapped into this vicious circle.
As reading is being more and more discouraged and alternative ways of obtaining knowledge are presented, i cannot stop and think of the consequences these things will have on the generations of young people that are realising what is going on in the world at this point in time.
A solution? Here is my take on the problem.
I believe that written text is one of the most important forms of knowledge sharing designed. It is powerful because it relies on interaction, and this concept, the concept of interaction is a powerful device. You will always understand something if somebody else explains it to you once and then is there to answer your questions and probably explain it once more as he’s discovered what you’re doing wrong with his words. In the written world, you get to make everything. The more you create, the more you get out of the words or formulas that are before you.
In a world where things like youtube are gaining traction, and people want to experience other places through the eyes of other peoples, words are left in one place forgot and misplaced.
Services
Checking Facebook yields hundreds of 9gag reblogs and thousands of youtube videos. Articles and other things are left somewhere behind. Publications like The Guardian and The Times develop Facebook news readers that end up making some of the most uninteresting and pour content articles viral.
The thought that less and less people challenge what is going on and decided to consume pre-chewed information should be alarming. In a society where we have access to some of the most interesting and challenging content , we chose to go the opposite way and indulge in little things that keep our minds free. But why do we need our minds free? What do we do with them most of the time? Think, i’m sure you’re joking.
A though should pass everybody’s mind. I’m relaxing right now, therefor at some point i need to be wired in. When was the last time that i experienced this state of mind? It was 9 months ago? What have i been doing all this time? It should be one of two things. I’m always wired, therefor i get the luxury to take a break at any time, or i’m sometimes plugged in and other times completely still. Today you get a weird concoction of the two that yields no palpable result, but it gets you through the day.
We consume pre-processed foods, neglect our health and spend endless nights until the early hours of the morning, but to what end? Isn’t there enough time to do everything right? No, is what i’m told. I’m told that i’m doing this and that because i am in a hurry to get this other thing done. But actually, everybody gets lost in the process and forgets what they’re suppose to do.
The disappointing thing is that nobody wants to acknowledge the truth. The day somebody comes and tells you “I’m denying having a problem, so i want to be treated like i don’t have one” is the day you realise there’s nothing you can do to help. Taking any sort of action is hard, but what is actually hard to do is making the first step.
If you’ve decided to do something, and you make the first step 50% of the problem is solved. Decided to do it today.
