Although the Spring Festival has just passed, most people have moved away from the ease of the festival and have devoted themselves to the intense work. In the past few days after the holiday, the most common sigh of everyone meeting is: The New Year is over so fast! I haven't had enough rest yet, I'm going to work again! ——It seems that "fast" has become the first keyword in our lives.
Regarding the changes our society is experiencing, the academic community has proposed a more accurate concept: "The Great Acceleration", which uses it to refer to our increasingly fast contemporary life.
In 2006, a psychologist from the UK conducted an experiment and found that the time it took for pedestrians around the world to walk the same road was 10% less than in the early 1990s. This big acceleration makes us feel out of control. Once upon a time, when dealing with daily affairs, our ancestors were striding freely, and our parents were striding hard. Now, we ran and jumped. Smartphones have successfully tied us to work, and more and more work is taken from the office to home.
In 1990, 49% of Europeans felt that their work arrangements were too heavy. By 2000, that number rose to 60%, and those who feel busy with work are twice as likely to experience common stress symptoms such as back or shoulder and neck pain than the average person. In addition, the number of people with anxiety and mental health problems among children and adolescents is gradually rising.
As the pace of life accelerates, our tolerance threshold is gradually lowered. Nowadays, websites with page loading for more than 2 seconds will be announced by Google. Some psychologists conducted a survey among readers of USA Today and found that people's anger or frustration about any kind of troubles, such as waiting in line or traffic jams, have soared in the past 20 years.
In this regard, Robert Colvile, the author of the book "Great Acceleration", proposed that overall, Big Acceleration is still an excellent thing for humans. Although its benefits are not uniformly distributed, the harm it brings is almost as great as the opportunities it brings, but this is also why it has never been so important to know how to reduce the worst consequences of change and embrace the best effect of change. We have integrated some of the author's discussions about the impact of the big acceleration on the emotions, arts, and news industries. Through these discussions, we may have some new views on this era of big acceleration.
01. Convenient and fast dating package
True love is sitting face to face, without the desire to play with your phone at all.
- Alan Deborton
Many people have argued that social acceleration will gradually lead us to depravity and destruction, but few people have seized the most obvious evidence - the transformation of TV blind date program .
TV blind date program was relatively gentle when it first appeared. In the UK's Blind Date or the US's The Dating Game, there will be a kind middle-aged host who will lead young people through dangerous places of love. The highlight of the show is that the guests cannot see their date, and they must make judgments on them based on just a few words, even if it is often a pretentious chat. At that time, this short and shallow contact seemed not enough to establish a romantic relationship. But compared to today's blind date shows, it is like a gentle conversation between ancient Athenians.
Since 2010, the largest commercial TV station in the UK, ITV, will broadcast an episode of "Take Me out" every Saturday night. This show is the most blunt and cruelest speed dating version. In the studio, 30 beautiful and glamorous female guests formed a circle, each representing a unique type. Then one male guest after another took the elevator to the studio and appeared in front of the female guest. The moment the girls see the male guest, they can start pressing the button in front of them to turn off the light to show that they are not interested. If all the 30 female guests on the field turn off the lights, the man will be kicked out of the show without hesitation.But if there is more than one light on the stage before he leaves the stage, the choice will turn around - he can ask a question to the female guest who is on, and then press the light of the female guest he refuses to, and spend the weekend that often appears under the camera with his heart-wrenching girl. With the warm sunshine and soft beaches, if you are lucky, you will also have wonderful sex.
"Great Acceleration: Why Our Life Gets Faster" Author: (English) Robert Colville, Translator: Zhang Pei, Version: Unread | Beijing United Publishing Company January 2019
"Date Me" is just an entertainment program, which seems harmless, but it combines betrayal and efficient pairing vulgarly, reflecting our deep concerns about the constant changes of social life under the pressure of big acceleration. As our brains and bodies change according to the needs of accelerated culture, the way we communicate with each other changes. In any sense, what controls the laws of this new world is the acceleration of desire.
This reflects an interesting question about big acceleration: What will happen when the Google generation begins their most important search, that is, finding a life partner? With the vigorous development of the Internet, a large number of dating websites emerged. Online dating is not only huge in business, but has become very ordinary. For example, among young senior professionals in London, even the outright Conservatives, it is hard to meet people who have never used Guardian Soulmates. Between 2004 and 2014, one-third of American couples who got married met online.
Guardian Soulmate Website Interface.
This is exactly the same as the characteristics of big acceleration: browsing hundreds of web entries, or having an omniscient computer help you choose the best match, is obviously faster and more convenient than time-consuming and laborious meeting people. It is also because of this that speed dating has changed from novelty to the main dating form now, because it is not only more efficient, but also richer and more fun, giving you a constant stream of freshness and not having to worry about being tortured all night by dating someone who doesn’t feel.
However, in fact, from the perspective of big acceleration, the most interesting thing about a dating website is not its success rate, but its failure rate. Yes, dating sites can match you with millions of people, but no matter how complex their matching skills are, they are not as accurate as guessing. The truth is that no matter how good a person’s psychological characteristics are, the only way to know whether two people can get along with each other for a long time is to let them get along with each other.
This is a fatal flaw of traditional online dating. It promises to be faster and more convenient, but it cannot be truly fulfilled. For those first dates that you already know that it is impossible to have a meal before ordering, online dating really saves time. But for encountering the "only" in life, online dating is still not efficient enough. One study found that online daters spend an average of 5.2 hours a week browsing profiles, 6.7 hours a week sending emails to potential partners, and only 1.8 hours really spent meetings, which in most cases “a little disappointment drinks coffee.”
But there is a more popular tool that makes online dating an extremely natural part of our lives. This tool is the dating app. The most popular one is Tinder. Tinder will not help you find the person you match best, but will use your mobile phone positioning technology to continuously recommend suitable people around you. You can choose whether you like it by sliding the screen, just as easy as shuffling it. If the other party likes you too, your phone will send a notification to tell you that the pairing is successful.
Tinder interface.
This mobile phone application perfectly summarizes many aspects of accelerated culture, such as timely and convenient sex, which can be obtained through mobile phones. Tinder spread like a prairie fire. However, for critics, Tinder is also a classic example of why accelerating culture is a degenerate culture: it strips romance from dates and replaces it with a string of almost random sexual events, like a computer game.This date failed? Just press the Continue button, or use the wording on Tinder, "Come on playing?"
, and serious life problems and love problems are packaged as vulgar entertainment, as if a whole generation is watching the "Date Me" program every night. What Tinder brings is not true love, but a series of instant fragmented experiences.
Of course, there is another perspective to look at Tinder. Whether it’s a long-term or short-term relationship, Tinder not only makes finding a partner easier, but it actually shows that people are using digital tools and technologies to enhance their real-life experience, making life more rewarding and enjoyable, rather than hiding in their phones and avoiding interactions with the real world.
The debate on the acceleration of the pace of social life can basically be said to be a debate whether we use electronic devices in the end or whether we are used by electronic devices. As for which side you will support, it is likely not determined by the research and analysis results, but by a more basic point - whether your view of human nature is optimistic or pessimistic. As always, what technology has never changed is not human nature, but our opportunity to express our nature.
02.
Speed-bearing art?
We used to wait quietly / We used to wait quietly / Now we shouted, "Sing the chorus again."
- Arcade Fire band "We Used to Wait" (Arcade Fire, We Used to Wait)
In November 2004, Philip Roth (Philip Roth) rarely accepted an interview with PBS Newshour. This highly respected author, who has been engaged in novel creation for life, expressed deep concerns about the future of novels in an interview. He said: "I think people in twenty or twenty-five years will not read novels anymore. They have other things to do, other ways to relax, and other ways to use their imagination, and I think those are likely to be more attractive."
Philip Roth
This is also the deepest fear of the "slow reading" movement: in this fanatical, upset era, people will have no time to read great works and ideas. What's worse is that now any media form must compete with other media for attention, which means that all media forms will become more noisy, exaggerated and eye-catching.
Under the influence of great acceleration, popular culture has become more rapid, shallow and insignificant, such as music. However, the most successful musician of the past decade, Adele (Adele), is a slow, affectionate singer with a velvety voice. She seems to have traveled from the 1950s. How should this be explained?
Adele
This is because the crucial point of accelerating culture is its non-uniformity. The kind of songs and music that allow you to immerse yourself in still have room for survival. In fact, due to the various pressures in work and life, our demand for this product is stronger than ever.
In terms of books, the most popular books in the UK over the past 40 years are often large or rather obscure reading, such as Wild Swans, Angelas Ashes, and the most popular A Brief History of Time.
In fact, probably under the influence of great acceleration, the best-sellers of novels seem to be getting longer and longer, not shorter and shorter. From 1995 to 2005, the average number of novels on the New York Times sales list increased by more than 100 pages to 385 pages. The big works that were later best-selling, such as Donna Tartt's 771-page "The Goldfinch", "Freedom" by Jonathan Franzen, and Eleanor Cattan's "The Luminaries", show that this trend has not disappeared in recent years. An article in the American online magazine Slate claimed that the novel market is full of so many "maximum works" that we have officially entered the era of "super long novels".
Unfortunately, we cannot get evidence in this regard: Amazon accounts for a very large proportion of the book market. However, because Amazon refuses to share its sales data, there is no authoritative list of books that people actually buy. However, Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, an independent e-book distributor, is convinced that book sales increase with word count. On his website, the average number of words in the top 10 books exceeds 100,000, which is much longer than traditional printed novels. The average word count of the top 100 books is slightly less than 100,000, while the average word count of the top 1,000 books is around 73,000.
There is also good news for the current situation of popular culture : Whether popular culture is fast and shallow, or slow and elegant, the cultural products we consume are becoming more and more complex and richer.
This is a very important conclusion. However, in his book "Everything Bad is Good for You", Steven Johnson mentioned that not only the pace of TV shows has accelerated, but its information density and knowledge challenge level have also improved. Johnson said that if you watch an episode of Dragnet first, then a episode of Hill Street Blues, and finally a more modern TV series, such as " Crime Scene Investigation " (CSI), you will find that the number of people, relationships and plot points have increased dramatically. In other words, without stronger coping skills, we cannot withstand such information bombardment. That's why "The Wire" or "Breaking Bad" is better, or at least more complicated than previous TV shows, because there are indeed audiences that can understand.
Breaking Bad
Some creators even blend the depth and complexity of the feature film with the speed of the short film. This combination makes some viewers very annoyed, while others are fascinated by it. The most popular series in the US television industry are currently series such as " Hip-Hop Empire" or "Scandal", which uses rapid plot development to attract audiences and make them feel like they are riding a roller coaster. There is also British TV screenwriter Steven Moffat, who is the producer of "Doctor Who" and the creator of "Herlock". His works are known for their complex, dense and fast plots. The story logic and time of his creations are jumping greatly, and the audience needs to struggle to catch up with the rhythm of the plot.
Doctor Who is the tenth Doctor of Doctor, played by David Tennant .
As consumers, we are in a better situation than ever before. If we can’t use our brains to get some fun, there are beautifully made products waiting for us to choose from; if we want depth, there are songs from Radio Commander Band (Radiohead), series produced by HBO, or novels by Philip Rose. Therefore, from many perspectives, the great acceleration has brought us into a true golden age of culture.
Radiohead
Some people disagree with this. At present, so many popular cultures seem to be blindly converging and have no new ideas. How can it be called the Golden Age? At most it can only be regarded as an ever-increasing era of innovation. There are many eye-catching highlights and voice changes in pop songs, but it still feels like you are coming down from the same conveyor belt. There are sequels after sequels in theaters, and the big events of video games are all about the release of a new version of the multi-billion dollar series. After every unexpected success, there will be a series of products with similar titles. The phenomenon of
is also a by-product of the rapid acceleration. There are two reasons for this: biological and economic factors. Our brains are naturally fond of novelty, but they also like familiarity and repetition—dopamine flows along the same road that was excavated. Therefore, to make our brain nerves happy, the key is to challenge our expectations with something that sounds or looks familiar but is novel enough.
As written by neurologist Daniel Levitin in "This Is Your Brain on Music", the secret to a truly great melody is that it first builds expectations and then breaks them. In fact, our neural, artistic and economic needs are driving popular culture in two completely different directions. One direction is towards exaggeration and triviality, or you might think it is a perfect short-short and tiny experience in formality and pleasure. The other direction is moving towards a longer-term and in-depth experience of extremely detailed and complex products.
Amazon is trying to create its own ideal image for media consumption. The logo of its Kindle e-book reader is that a person sits on a lonely tree and is immersed in deep thoughts about the literary treasure in front of him. You can't even be sure whether he's holding a Kindle or a book. The purpose of this picture is to bridge the gap between novel equipment and ancient pleasure. The picture seems to say that even in a world full of speed and shock, the cultural heritage left by Philip Ross will be safe for some time.
03.
Tomorrow's news
Obviously, the news is faster. But has the quality of news improved? Remember the answer to this question: "No."
- John Oliver told Tom Brocao in " Daily Show "
"Shamed and put on a headband, the tyrant is facing the fate of going to a steel gallows." This is the front page headline title used by the British " Daily Telegraph " when he announced the death of Saddam Hussein in December 2006. This article describes the entire process of the US and Iraqi officials witnessing Saddam being hanged: "The metal plate opened and made a clang, and then the weight of the tyrant's body pulled the rope straight and made a muffled sound."
However, there is a problem in this article: the description does not conform to the facts. At about three a.m. British time, when Saddam's death was released, newspaper reporters had temporarily prepared a manuscript based on Western officials' explanations of possible events and made the manuscript read like a witness's report on the situation at that time.
However, when this manuscript was edited, typed, printed, and then sent to the breakfast table of a British family, something completely different happened. A video of the shaking of the real execution scene was posted online. In this video, as Saddam was sent to the gallows in humiliation, a group of thugs in leather jackets shouted slogans and ridiculed him. The video has no slutty atmosphere described in the article, no officials present, and Saddam is not wearing a headgear as described in the Daily Telegraph title.
The news industry has two successes: first, the reporting must be accurate; second, the reporting must be rapid.
But with the acceleration of the pace of great acceleration, people increasingly feel that the world is changing too fast and difficult to keep up, even those who specialize in reporting or analyzing international news don’t feel that they can’t keep up. For example, this story of the Daily Telegraph does not mean that the newspaper made a mistake in the facts, but that the truth surfaced quickly: an Iraqi man used his mobile phone to report the truth about Saddam's execution in front of the Daily Telegraph and the entire Western media.
is not just the nature of news reports. As news audiences are shifting to the Internet in large numbers, traditional business models and working methods are gradually collapsed. Under the influence of speed, traditional "news stories" are also replaced by "news content". These contents have no knowledge content and are purely to meet the public's endless demand for digital entertainment. Faced with overwhelming information, both journalists and audiences gradually lost the ability to examine and identify.
Many people say that the news reports are now broken. Old-school journalists have published books that feel desperate to read, such as Blur, No Time to Think or Flat Earth News, lamenting that traditional standards of journalism are dead.Media critics Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel's 1999 judgment on journalism is still valid: "The journalism has lost its direction under the influence of rapid technological changes, with a decline in market share, and is facing increasing pressure on economic efficiency."
"No Time to Think" and "Flat Earth News" cover.
However, these pressures are not born out of thin air, and they are inseparable from the trends we have already discussed. Readers no longer buy newspapers because more and more people feel that it is more convenient to obtain instant information through computers or mobile phones. However, there are also reasons why readers have closer time arrangements - there are both various cultural and entertainment, and there are increasingly heavy pressures to deal with in-work, social and family life.
Nic Newman of the Reuters Institute for News said the truth is that "people are increasingly hoping to see any form of news on any device at any time." This in turn accelerates the news cycle. As before, reporters gather information, write press releases, and report the next day is not fast enough. The press release now is in real time: first post the message, followed by comments, criticisms or new facts.
Although this way of reporting may be exciting, the need to post messages on different channels has caused a heavy burden for reporters: first tweet, then quickly post breaking news on the website, and then maybe write a blog, then read the reaction on Twitter, and then summarize and write a longer article, and report the next day. In most newsrooms, the number of journalists is gradually declining, but their workload is growing, and the time limit for completing work tasks is getting shorter and shorter.
These transformations have brought various consequences, each of which has far-reaching impacts. First, if you let fewer people do more and more work, the quality will drop, which is an inevitable consequence. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post claimed a few years ago: "The speed of news has dazzled me and my colleagues over the last few years. Everyone has made us hurry, hurry, hurry up. This demand is understandable in this highly connected world. However, this creates a clear sacrifice: you don't have time to call for more messages, and you don't have the chance to think about the press release you are pieced together."
For the online economy, page views are money, and the most urgent thing is to find something online, even if it means covering up the facts or hyping up stories that are not considered stories at all. People collectively call it "clickbait". A typical example is the story of "Balloon Boy": According to a father from , Colorado, the United States, his child was trapped in a helium balloon and floated into the air thousands of feet above the ground as the balloon floated. Even though the story was fake, the news website reported it with relish for hours.
"Confessions of a Media Promoter" Author: Ryan Holliday, Translator: Pan Lijun, Version: Guangdong People's Publishing House June 2013
Ecosystems such as
are obviously full of deception. Ryan Holiday, a former marketing director for controversial American company American Apparel, admitted he was a "media pusher." In his book Trust Me, I'm Lying, he describes how easy it is to manipulate media. He just needs to publish stories on a small blog website, and then these stories will gradually flow to a larger platform and finally penetrate the entire media system. No one will check because they don't have time.
However, it is crucial for this terrible new world that while the acceleration of journalism brings a messy environment and frequent catastrophic consequences to professional news providers, its acceleration has also prompted a blowout of high-quality news, with fascinating long-form works and in-depth investigations alongside the title party, which can even be said to be in more numbers than ever before.
is just in today's world where everyone has a smartphone, the media may have to say goodbye to the role of referee who decides what we read and what we don't read. Walter Lippman, one of the pioneers of American journalism, once said: "The news that newspapers get every day is mixed with various facts, propaganda, rumors, suspicion, clues, hopes and fears." The task of screening and organizing these news "is the same truly sacred work as a pastor in a democratic system." But now, this task has been replaced by the Internet: aren’t the Twitter messages you send the essence of the ones you select and organize from all the messages you think are suitable for publishing, and publish them at a speed that is incomparable to any newspaper or website? This screening process can be confusing and sometimes even catastrophic. However, under the accelerated action, the collapse of the traditional media model does not mean that we have lost the ability to understand the world's major events. In fact, reality is exactly the opposite.
Author: (English) Robert Colville
Integration: Feng Xiaoyang Editor: Zuo Zuo, Xu Wei
Proofreading: Zhai Yongjun
