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hello all,
joseph's pensive email has made me think a lot
about this forum... i am a sociologist so you'd presume i would have thought
about the implications of this type of communication before, but i haven't. the
internet is a big sociological current at the moment and attracts much attention
in the discipline. i hadn't really engaged with it before but i think i may
start to now.
it strikes me that we f_minors constitute a
striking and coherent example of what it means to live in late-modernity. if
modernity is characterized by the dissipation of social ties and relationships
(all that is solid melts into air, writes marx) and a new type of individuality,
then perhaps this is it. modernity is both freeing, in the sense that an
identity can be constructed from dissperate elements (the technology of creating
our "selves"), and constraining, because modern individuality is
isolating and lonely. max weber once said that modernity was the greatest step
in human existance, but also our downfall because it was a spiritless age, and
age without heart.
does our list exemplify weber's thesis? do we
use this communication in this way? we can link up, using technology, and
exchange ideas across time and space, allowing ourselves the freedom of
discussion. this is a freedom never known before. yet we will never meet, will
we? we are all alone, at our computers, looking into the screen of our pcs or
macs, and we don't know who we are conversing with. there is no concrete
relationship - it is the exact opposite of a pre-modern form of human
exchange.
there is a certain melancholy in this. we become
isolated by the very tools which allow us the freedom to explore and exchange
ideas. is this the ambiguity of modernity? the way in which we are at once both
constrained and free? i am interested in this question because i enjoy
participating in this list a lot - or at least reading it - yet i think that it
is one of the most impersonal forms of communication there is.
what struck me about joseph's email was that it
posed the question "why am i writing to you when i don't know who you
are"? he answered it and justified himself - and i agree with him - but the
question still remains. forget the subject matter for a moment - as important as
gould is - and think about the way we construct identities and selves. an
identity is by definition created through an identification with something. we
all identify with one thing on this list. but it is an abstract identification,
far removed from a traditional based identity. now i identify with people who
live in places i cannot pronounce - instead of the boys from my local village.
the class boundaries are broken slightly (not completely as forms of cultural
capital are still required to engage with the music that is discussed [and
economic capital if you look at the price of cds in the uk!]) and other
boundaries such as those which we cannot experience in this format (sexuality
for example) are dispelled.
it is a strange thing, so it is...and i could go
one writing...but you're probably bored by now (whoever you are!).
paul.
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