Fractured?

I have recently been thinking of the world in which we live in. A world in that in the past ten years more emphasis has been made on “going green” and social media than on a whole lot else. I will admit that I am not the most technologically gifted person, when it comes to computers or gadgets I either break them or they break on me. But, I do want to look and maybe question the way some of these technologies have impacted our culture and society.

During a car ride home I listened to a podcast that brought up an idea that I haven’t been able to get out of my head. It is the idea of being a part of a fractured culture. In a world that is obsessed with letting everyone know what they are doing at every moment it’s hard to think that we are really just fragmented pieces desiring connection. Social networking sites have done a great job at doing both of these things- connecting us and fragmenting us. We create this profile based of some perception of ourselves with a little truth and a little lie. Sites like Facebook allow us to have easy connection with people that we would otherwise not while adding people that we maybe have met once. On top of our desire to connect with people, when we are on Facebook it’s usually an act done in solitude. We are completely fragmented. The goal of social networking fails us in some way.

The podcast that I was listening to also related the idea of fragmentation to music. In the local Birmingham music scene there are several different styles of music and preferred venues to catch these at. In one week you can see popular indie bands like Local Natives at Workplay, small folk locals at Moonlight café, or electronic pop indie stars Casio Kids at Bottle tree. We all have our preferences and thanks to YouTube, Last.FM, Jukesy, and Pandora we are able to have complete access to the specific style of music we most enjoy. Sites like Jukesy take songs that trend from YouTube and Last.FM and place them in genres. From their listings you get random playlists in which you are able to save and replay. This music revolves around your personal choice and likes. So what exactly does this mean? Well, it means those artists who are relatively unknown now become known, but only on a small scale. So we have these small groups of semi popular artists unlike ten years ago when pop charts were claimed by three or four major players. Yes, today’s charts are claimed by Lady GaGa and Ke$ha, but then there is Adele, Mumford and Sons, and Florence & the Machines who have found their way up the charts well after their first album release. Before these climbs up the charts these artist were loved by small groups of music lovers and coffee houses and sound stages around the U.S. We have created fragmentations.

I am not saying that this fragmentation is a bad thing. What I am saying is that with the social network up rise we are striving to be connected while doing a pretty good job of separating ourselves from others.