This week’s comic was sparked by the realization that nobody answers their phones anymore, yet everyone seems to text back within a minute. So people are there, they have their phones, they just can’t or won’t answer. Texting though… it’s so easy, so quick. Quick! That’s what it’s about these days. Hurry up! Stop wasting my time! There are so many other things I could be doing right now! If civilization doesn’t collapse and we actually keep progressing, I wonder what things will be like 100 years from now. Will everyone just be plugged into everything at all times? Will it just be one big hive mind, since we’re so interconnected? Maybe that would be better. It seems to work out pretty well for bugs. Sure, it’s boring, but it’s successful.
TLDR – This week’s Dustinland is about short attention spans.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101206/ap_on_sc/climate_disappearing_nations
The thing is 98% of everything is utter rubbish, but egotistical work-shy artists insist on publishing, so it becomes hard finding anything interesting. Ask middle class kids what they want to do when they are older and I bet 9/10 say write or travel, but what have these dull heads got to actually write about? and I’m sure Dustin doesn’t want any more people travelling and killing the environment etc..
I think when movable type was invented, people were wringing their hands about how it would flood the world with cheap text and devalue the experience of reading, etc. Hell, when writing was developed, some elders probably moaned about how it meant the end of the storytelling tradition. Techie change happens, people adapt and life goes on.
yeah they don’t like the fact that technology generally brings power to the average person and hence competition for their jobs and status.