Here is another letter from my good friend,
the ever wise, Michael Wolff addressed to young designers in India. But
of course universally relevant.
Dear
Reader,
A
longer letter than usual, I hope the Editor will forgive me.
First,
I hope you’re well and happy. And second, I wonder if you’re as discontent with
‘content’ as I am.
‘Content’
is one of those impersonal words like ‘consumer’ or ‘diet’. I think it means the stuff that we watch, read, consume, connect with, think
about, know about and talk about. It’s
quite a puzzling word. ‘Contents’ used to mean a list of what you might find in
a book, and ‘content’ meant that you were feeling calm and happy with life.
Now it’s more likely to be used by a medic to describe what’s in your stomach
if you’re being examined in a post-mortem, or by airport security to describe
what’s in your suitcase.
In
the world of media it’s used to describe what’s published or broadcast. But
who’s is it? Is it intellectual content already in my mind, or is it something
that someone has the rights to, and wants to put into my mind? Where does it
live? For every programme broadcast there are millions of different ways in which
people see it. What one person writes is not what another reads. What one
person says is not what another hears. So who really owns that kind of content?
It’s
now 11.30, on bank holiday Monday, the 3rd of January 2011. Three things, or
bits or bytes of content, have already agitated my brain during the last 24
hours, and have lodged there. I’ve turned each one of them into content inside
me – they’ve become some of my own content of the day.
The
first was on Woman’s Hour, live on BBC Radio 4
and not on iPlayer, ‘Listen again’, or in a podcast. I listened to a live
discussion that Jane Garvey had with Susan Maushart about her book: “The Winter
of Disconnect.” Susan had pulled
the plug on all the screens in her home for six months. She described the radical
effect that this had on her family. It seemed to me that it had ended the
isolated and solitary world in which her family members had come to live with
their own screens and iPhones, and in which they’d forgotten how to share music
and life together. It enabled them to rediscover their
own community as a family. Susan also described her relationship with her
iPhone, as a relationship of compelling, seemingly rich, but ultimately lonely
dialogue with a world of virtual connection.
I
was shocked as I realised how I too sometimes slide into a kind of sensual
solitude, sometimes sharing my discoveries and experiences with others, nearly
always after the event, and often forgetting what I’d seen or heard altogether. There’s far, far too much to know, so sometimes
you have to get out of the shower of content. It’s a shower that can pour
endless knowledge, information and drama over us, from billions of tiny nozzles, all the time.
Is
the news really the news, or has it become a kind of editorialised series of
press releases? Why do I feel so easily interested and almost addicted to the
stories selected to be the news? Stories that often start and vanish with no
explanation. Sometimes these are stories of global importance, sometime they’re
stories of astonishing triviality. I can easily stop reading a boring book or
walk away from a film or play, if I dislike watching it. Why do I find it harder to stop watching almost anything
on television or listening to almost anything on the even more compelling radio?
For
me the most distressing thing on television, probably in my lifetime, were the
two episodes on the first days of the Iraq
wars. Before the invasion we saw ‘Desert Cloud’, with its own logo and music.
And then we saw ‘Desert Storm’ with
another set of logos and music. Both seemed like episodes of a poorly branded
commercial tv series – a profoundly tragic, and possibly criminal war, reduced
to an impersonal and sententious soap opera. If this is content, then we should
shun it. But I didn’t. I watched this grotesque ‘quasi series’, just as
millions of Americans and others did, somehow immunised from the reality of the
terror that was actually taking place.
The
second thing that agitated my brain was some research, commissioned by ‘Free
Sat’ and carried out by Exeter University. I was shocked at the increase in the
amount of hours we, in the UK, watch TV; I was interested in the various
categories into which we seem to fall by making the different kinds of
selections we make in our watching choices, and surprised at the amount of time
we spend talking to others about what we’ve seen. It doesn’t seem to leave much
time for anything else. Apart from eating and sleeping, dreaming, making love
and doing whatever we do called work, this research implied that there doesn’t
seem to be much else to life other than watching TV and its content, and then
talking about it.
Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in
The Big Sleep
The
third, and by far the most satisfying thing that agitated my brain in the last
24 hours, was seeing Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall in a marvellous movie –
The Big Sleep, at the National Film Theatre, with my daughter. Raymond
Chandler’s writing and William Faulkner’s screenplay are extraordinarily brisk
and finely tuned. The whole thing is a feast of talent, wit and style. Sharing
this with my daughter, who often shares films with me, was a delight.
Even
though I realise that so much of my life is, like anyone else’s, ultimately
experienced alone, I realised just how much I value the
helpless laughter and great excitements and even unexpected fears and other
kinds of adventures that I have with friends. For me it’s only with friends
that ‘content’ becomes valuable. What I think I know is all unnecessary weight
to me, unless I can use it to be useful to other people. Seeing great art, like cave paintings
or the work great actors and painters and writers, is only useful to me when it
enriches my life and so my relationships with others. These days in particular,
the quality of many films from around the world
is extraordinary. The talent in the cinema now seems to me to outstrip the
talent in any other form of art. But for me it’s always more powerful when it’s
shared with friends.
On
television too, programmes like the exceptional films made by Witness. The
Witness call to action: “See it, film it, change it” is compelling and, as far
as I know, their documentaries are only shown on Al Jazeera. But as moving and
as important as I think all the Witness films are, they represent a minute
fraction of what television stations put in front of our faces. Many more
people seem to prefer to look back at a wildly romanticized past than
to face some of the more shameful realities of the present.
When
I read books, always in isolation, I feel both the excitement that great
writing stirs in me and, at the same time, the claustrophobia of solitude. I’m
always bursting to share what moves me. Just as with learning, if it can change
and deepen my ability to relate to others, then I’m enriched and changed by it.
When
I read Gabriel Marquez’s great novel Love in the time of Cholera, it was a
transformative experience for me. That someone else in the world recognised
glass windows that could smell like soup or vice-versa was wonderful. More
importantly, the relationships that this book revealed and described were rich
and intimate. The whole book remains a moving and profound inspiration to me.
After completing it, I was left with the frustrating feeling that I didn’t really know how to know people. I knew better how to see them as content.
Sometimes
you choose precisely what you eat, and sometimes you accept the hospitality of
others without judgement or discrimination. It’s the same with content. Sometime you choose what you’re
interested in and sometimes you join in with someone else’s interests.
I
can’t remember why I watched The Sopranos. Did I choose it or did someone share
it with me? Did I decide it was a masterpiece or did I agree with someone
else’s point of view? It was the same with The Simpsons and Dr Katz and
probably the same with everything. It’s only through
sociability that content brings
value into my life.
On
reflection I do believe that all those three are masterpieces.
Choosing
and enjoying your own intellectual menu in private is, I think, a kind of
technology-driven epidemic, with pandemic
potential, and a destructive new aspect of normal social life for many. It’s
making social life anti-social. Pushing out into conversations with anyone, and
constantly prizing my closing mind open into unfamiliar territories of the
tastes and the influences of other’s self-expression, is far more enriching for
me than simply choosing what I like, because I already I like it.
It
reminds me of not liking oysters for many years, before I’d even tasted them.
It also reminds me of the people I misjudged in my first impression of them,
who then turn out to become my greatest friends. That moment when you decide that you’re really not
interested in a programme or a film or a book, before seeing them, is a kind of
self-denial that diminishes anyone. The price of missing a miracle is far
higher than the price of trusting your judgement. Life is a dance without the
right steps. Taste what you’re offered fearlessly and be willing to dance. I
think it’s better to trust your open mind than to trust your judgement - a
judgement that can only be created from your past.
There’s
so much to see and do and eat and read, how do you choose now, and how will you
make your choices in the future?
For me, now, I‘m interested in everything, so I don’t do a lot of choosing.
I listen to recommendations and often find myself with a programme or a book or
a film or a conversation and then see what happens and what I feel. As
for what I’ll choose to do or watch in the future, I think it’s like any aspect
of the future, no one really knows what will happen, what technology will
bring, or what kind of content there will be to choose from, even five years
from now. All we really know for sure is that our planet will be warmer.
Will
we all be able to have un-shiny big screens in our homes on which we can choose
to display perfect digital reproductions of great paintings from any of the
world’s collections?
Will
internet daters have full size floor to ceiling screens on which they can have
virtual speed dating, liberating them into a wider idea of social life and
relationships?
Will
Wikileaks spawn many new sites that use existing private technology publically,
and bring about the irreversible end of privacy?
Will
a new activism, using photography, television and participation, like
‘Witness’, restore biodiversity to a more inclusive world?
Will
there be a ‘new generation of ‘un-embedded’ journalists who will bring an open
mind to our press, if newspapers survive?
Will
we become so obsessed with our interactive gadgets that we lose interest in
anything other than being glued to their unlimited content?
Will
we need social lives or will we expand by looking at other people’s lives in
‘series’ that become more and more intimate, and in which we can participate in
the details and the outcomes?
Will
the four-wall-screen in Ray Bradbury’s story, where there’s a permanent and
continuous family series in which people live as permanent voyeurs, become a
reality as TV sets get bigger and bigger?
Will
content transform education and free humanity from being taught that our future
is simply an extrapolation of the past?
Will
there be an effective backlash against globalisation of content?
Will
future media with a new quality of integrity change us and enable us to change
how politics, business and work are transacted throughout the world, to benefit
all people and eliminate conflict and poverty?
Will
our variety of nations and cultures and languages endure, or will technology,
content and our potential connection with other planets, turn us into a single
peaceful and interdependent humanity?
I
hope that many people will want to turn the current overwhelming volume of
‘content’ down, without losing the richness that education, art, creativity and
enlightenment brings. I hope too, that
many more people will want to focus on their personal fulfilment and on the
enrichment of their own lives with their families, colleagues and friends.
Most
of all, I hope that I, and you, spend less time sitting down, watching
mass-produced content on a variety of devices in private, and more time talking and walking and being together making our own content.
Till the next time.
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