Damien Mulley
“Brainy Books” for the Feeling Lost generation? Or are we the Want to Know More generation?
We have sites called Just Fucking Google it that are built to shame people for not Googling things:
Someone thinks you are an idiot because you were too stupid to check Google before asking a question.
and also Let Me Fucking Google That For You.
Kids are learning the facts of life from porn. The Internet was designed to route around a damaged network in case of nuclear war. The kids are now routing around bad parenting but it’s crap that it’s porn they’re seeking to explain things since those same bad parents have palpitations if there were sites explaining sex to them.
Fuck the Exposition says David Simon when he was doing Tremé. TV now treats audiences as smart and not having to baby feed them complicated plots. Look at TV now and how dense the information is compared to 20 years ago. How innocent things were those days. Or just how crap we were at digesting information. I watched the pilot for the Six Million Dollar Man recently and it was so so slow and uninteresting. We expect much more from television now. We’re calling it the golden era and I’m sure it has much to do with the fact that we are good at understanding complex narratives thanks to the Internet and encountering more cultures.
Now this article points out that “brainy books” are becoming popular. Oh and a take about the same as that. I do see an up-tick in people seeking out information more than ever before. However, this is an age of always-on, fast Internet where if we have a question we type it into Google or we ask a device. We are listening to more podcasts and audiobooks. The documentary sections of Netflix and Amazon are doing great trade. Podcasts are booming. Non-fiction is booming because we do what we always have done: seek knowledge and meaning. And so we should cater for these needs. And books that cater for these needs are being bought which sees publishers seek out more books like this. Yes, social anxiety is increasing with Trump, Brexit, Putin and the world starting to burn but is the cause of a population seeking out more information really linked to this anxiety? I’m not too sure but I’d like to know more.