Street roots., June 26, 2009, Page 9, Image 9

1ft I street roots
9
Education * Dialogue ♦ Independence
HERE TODAY, fro m page 9
started it.
< I also think that there’s something very
fun and provocative about the way flash
mobs disrupt urban space. Y’know, this was
not so long after September 11, and there
was definitely a sense in New York that
public gatherings were somehow risky, that
there was potential danger involved in
crowds and unplanned activities; and flash
mobs were kind of a light-hearted defusing
of that idea.
. And I think people liked it because flash
mobs make physical the virtual connections
that exist between people — in terms of your
friends and acquaintances that you maybe
don’t see very often but you know them via
email. And this was before Facebook. So you
would suddenly see, made manifest in this
very present, physical way, this kind of
email network that goes from person to
person to person.
R.R.: You wrote that the flash mob started
because you were bored.
B.W: Well, yeah! [Laughs.] I’m not going
to be apologetic about th a t I think a lot of .
great creative energies come out of ;
boredom. You disagree?
. R.R.: No, I don’t. You wrote about having
all kinds of ideas and waiting for that one that
ignites your passion. So I agree that boredom
can lead to a great creative concept. What I
was trying to get at. was, do you think boredom
is involved in all nanostories?
B.W: No, no. One of the ideas I’m trying
to get across with nanostories is that they
just come up very naturally as a byproduct
of our media environment, coming up
somewhat organically out of the culture. We
get nanostorjes out of hews or public affairs,
or a band might suddenly become popular
arid they’re what I’d call a nanostory. I don’t
think there’s a grand unified theory as to
how all of these things sta rt
I do think that boredom, or the
perception of boredom, does play a role in r
why people shift their attention away from
one thing to the next big thing. As a culture
we have an orientation towardsnovelty. The
media essentially exists — and I would now
say the new media exists as well — to
continually feed us new and exciting and
supposedly revolutionary things. You pick
up [a] newspaper and every day there’s -
somebody with some new trend story about
some hot, new exciting thing that you didn’t
know about before. I think it’s become true
online, where various blogs and even
amateur media that’s dedicated to trying to
hold up something new and say, “Hey, aren’t
you sick of all this tired old stuff? Here’s
something new!”
R.R.: I think a great example o f a nanostory
is Susan Boyle (the YouTube sensation, known
for her voice and her nonglossy appearance).
B.W: Absolutely right. And I think it’s .
funny:. So many peopfe in the non-media
universe were forwarding that video around
and talking about her and she became this
brief national obsession. And now you look
R E U T E R S /S H A N N O N S T A P L E T O N
Participants in the growing flash mob craze gaze at the roaring dinosaur in the Toys ‘R ‘ Us Times Square store in New York in 2003. The
flashmob one in a string that popped up around the globe as part of the Mob Project, a Web-enabled movement in which a group of people all
show up at a place at an assigned time, act out a loose script, and then take off
back on that and sort of say, “Well, where
can. it possibly go from here?” The cultural
industry isn’t structured in such a way that
Susan Boyleis going to become some
Britney Spears — And that’s part of the.
reason people loved her so much and why
they were so intrigued by her. But even as
millennia.
I thinkthat Gladwell’s book was a very
well written, innovative example of that. I
really admire a lot of his work. In my book I
mention “The Tipping Point” and »
“Freakonomics” [by Steven Levitt and New '
York Times journalist Stephen J. Dubner] as
everybody was getting so excited about her,
examples of this type of book where a
you could almost sense that of course this
can’t last, of course we can’t stay focused on
Susan Boyle for much longer.
certain kind of insight about success is
being sold to the general readér. And in
general, I guess I find those kinds of books
a iittle bit distasteful, where essentially
what’s being sold is a very numbers-based
and. manipulative way of thinking about
other people.
R.R.: Inyour book, you wrote about
Malcolm Gladwell and “The Tipping Point.”
What do you think stands behind the success of
that book?
B.W: I feel like there has been a
phenomenon — and someone might lump
my book into this category — of social
science pom — [Laughs.] — By which I mean
that journalists and popularizers will go to . .
the world of social science.for some sort of
new of interesting result, and then they’ll
package them to the general reader in such
a way where all of the world’s problems are
going to be magically solved through some .
new and exciting and unexpected social
science insight. -•
I have a lot of respect for social science
and advances in social science and what
they can tell us about the way the world
works. But I do also feel like some of these
problems that we’re trying to solve through
social science — like happiness, or why some
things become successful and some things
don’t 4- these are age-old questions that have
animated literature and religion for
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that we can shut down the frenetic nature of
pur digital culture. Nor do I think we’d want
to do that, because I do think that we get
lots of great benefits from the new ways that
we are able to communicate with each
other. It is great to be able to connect with
so many people and to find other people
who share the same interests. But for á lot*
of reasons, I think that we should be wary of
giving ourselvesover eritirely to surfing the
latest wave of internet hysteria.
I think that one really important thing is
to carve out time in the day for longer-term
thoughts, for bigger pursuits, for not being
interrupted by e-mail and constantly .
refreshing the blogs. I think it’s important
to live in such a way that we cordon off
space away from information and
informational distraction, in order to work
on the projects that are bigger and more
important to us, and evéri just,to sit and.
think about nothing for a while.
R.R.:When I read Malcolm Gladwell, I ,
almost always feelgood at the end of it. He
makes me think, “Oh wow, I make it.”
B.W: Yeah, well I’m here to tell you you
can’t [Laughs.]
R.R.: Do you have any fears that your book
will be a blip? I ’m not saying that your book
is going to be one.
R.R.: But people, they making it. For 15
seconds.
B.W: That’s right. The Internet has made
it very seductive, There’s a new kind of viral
fame that’s very real. There’s a sense that
the best thing to aspire tò right now is, to
become a short-lived Internet sensation.
R.R.: You used the word viral Sois there
an anti-viral for this culture?
B.W: [Laughs.] Well, I don’t think that
there’s an anti-viral in thè serisè that we can
shut down the kind of nanostory machine, ;
B.W: I would say that, sadly my book
would be lucky to’be a blip. These days,
even when a book or a band or a movie is
really successful, usually it means that
they’re going to have a brief little moment
in the sün, where people talk about you and
take you seriously and then you’re forgotten.
So that’s the sort of best-case scenario.
[Chuckles.] I’m being somewhat facetious.
Reprinted from Real Change News, Seattle ~
© Street News Service: www.streetpapers.org
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