It’s a wide-known truth that water conducts electric current – with all its consequences for living creatures in it. Whether it’s a hairdryer which “accidentally” falls into the bath where the heroine of the film pampers herself or a torn wire of high-voltage transmission lines – both are killing things. That invisible “directed motion of electrically charged particles” flashingly invades the water space and exerts its effect, different from its useful “directed” function.
What am I getting at? The same analogy occurred to me from observing the flying spread of information all over our planet which has seemed so immensely big lately.
The in-depth stories, the living space of people was even smaller, more stable and understandable. The news came sparingly and it was understandable as well. It was about the immediate surrounding and something that had a direct influence on this very person, family, a small community of village or town. The visitors, who sometimes brought stories about life abroad and about events in a wider than local world, evoked interest and surprise – “Huh, the world turned upside down!”. A traveller went further and the locals renewed their quiet life as they were used to doing. If not taking into account social cataclysms of a wider extent which broke the usual life flow and the usual set of news. And it was everywhere – a personal world was usually small, understandable and one’s own.
The older generation still remembers the times when there was a single radio for the whole village (if it was) and what it produced was attentively controlled from “above”. I remember white and black TV sets, where one whole program was shown. And how happy we were to see the coloured television and a gradual expansion of choice that we can watch! A telephone in our flat appeared when I was graduating from school and now everyone has a phone in the pocket and even more that one. And every call is a piece of news of bigger or smaller extent.
How many paper letters with news has a thirty-year-old written to friends or relatives. Or a twenty-year-old? I remember writing to a boy who served in the army. Every day, I brought an envelope without a stamp with a conventional address of the military unit to a special box in the neighbouring street. A got an answer to the each of my letters in a week. And so every day. A post woman knew if I hadn’t had a letter today, then there would be two tomorrow. And in two weeks, I got the answer to the news which I wrote in the letters for my parent, who were working in the back of beyond in Algeria as geologists in the 80s. What a patience we had! It’s hard to imagine this today! Everything has changed – the world seems shrank and omnipresent information overflows each second. This pleases and makes you strained.
A rapid breakthrough in technical progress, which the humanity is now experiencing, densely sowed our planet with transport – ground, underground, water, air – turning the moving in the space an ordinary phenomenon, same as flying of news from one place to another. What to say about technical opportunities for information transmission not by word of mouth but by throwing it “on the air”!
You merely take a remote control into the hands and – bang! You have in your house all the tsunami, earthquakes, rapes, epidemics, wars and revolutions. And, when impressed by the benefits of the Internet, you sign in the social networks – bang! Bang! Bang! – and here you’re even closer to everything that is burning up the planet… By the way, here, you’re not the passive consumer of the TV porridge but a participator of events or at least the part of their discussions. Gulp someone’s bait, involve into the discussion, turn on emotions and fantasy, turn into a couch hundred fighter and already have your own recipes of the harmonious universe and the ways to destroy the global evil. And you become addicted to the close or distant emotional news which you don’t need at all. And the more of you live there, the less of you lead a real life.
Of course, you can stop any minute, abandon the Internet, turn off the TV and start to improve at least the immediate world. But only your hand is reaching to the all-mighty button, a fresh piece of news appears – “Shooting between clans of drug traffickers in Brazil” – and you’re already there, watching photos from the scene of the crime with bated breath. And you become the victim of a pretty hairdryer, thrown into your bath…
Has the human psyche evolved as much as the technical progress? Is the human able to absorb disturbing news from everywhere every minute? Don’t they lose the balance because of this or don’t they feel miserable, as a free-flowing sand in the tornado of global cataclysms? Don’t they lose themselves? How to prevent the overdose of the “directed motion of charged news”? I suppose a foil cap won’t help and psychologists and psychiatrists are already piled with work.
So, put your brain on and don’t forget about safety! Let’s keep electrical appliances dry and stay out of the puddles with wires!
Mila Ivantsova
