Tag Archives: Martin Amis

The Running Man

Few bits and pieces that have been floating around my mind today…

Social Networking & The ability to communicate

Came across this on twitter this morning. Its in reaction to something that I briefly touched upon earlier in the week regarding the impact of social networking upon peoples minds. The (in)famous brain woman, Lady Greenfield said that people speding loads of time in virtual worlds were losing their ability to communicate in the real world.

This provides another argument that says that for too long, too many of us have assumed that people who excel in virtual worlds are useless in physical worlds….and that there is evidence that the super-communicators in the emergent generations actually spent more time face to face with their friends than the rest of the population. It certainly makes sense that people who are interested in technology probably have greater levels of intellectual curiousity which probably also manifests itself in greater desires to spend more time communicating with other people in the ‘real’ world. This article makes the great point that:

“When Generation M, the mobile multitasking multimedia millenials, spend time online, they’re not sacrificing face time with their friends and family.

They’re sacrificing TV time. And advertisement time. And everything else that goes with it. Particularly when you compare them to earlier post-TV generations.

So they’re going to do what we never managed to do enough of. They’re going to choose what they do in their leisure time. Choose whose recommendations they trust. Choose whom they spend time with. Choose who they share their intentions with. Choose.”

I think this is a great point…

Martin Amis and Jade Goody:

Yesterday my mum said that the whole Jade Goody episode was like a Martin Amis novel. I’d never thought of it like that – but you couldn’t have written this script…  “Borne out of reality TV and ultimately dies on it”

It got me thinking about how we are getting closer to scenarios like ‘the running man.’ – that dodgy film with Arnie from the 80s. Watching Jade die is like the ultimate voyeuristic TV  programme and is not far removed from the running man, where people tune in, essentially to watch convicts being killed. Now, no-one wants to see Jade get killed but this deep seated voyeurism is getting pretty dark…

Tagged , , , , ,