Infinite Homogeneity #1
How did the infinite possibilities of the digital landscape lead to such homogeneity?
Websites that all look the same. Facebook as a ubiquitous window on the world. Material design. Endless movie retreads. Consistency over creativity. The predicatable over the puzzling.
In an Escheresque loop authors write self help articles about how they helped themselves so the audience will feel helped so the author can help themselves to the audience’s cash. Or popstars singing self-referential ditties about the travails of being a popstar. Or politicians offering the electorate marginal and spurious benefits as a pathway to their own self-aggrandisement. In a perverse win-win-lose shell game it’s all one step forward, two steps back. Each step of the way the only acceptable approach is to go forward with an unshakable confidence that there is a right way and a wrong way.
In a polarised political landscape, does it matter if you’re left or right if you don’t notice it’s all just the same Facebook mode-of-engagement with different words? Take any given message and swap good for bad, black for white, red for blue, right for wrong, and the opposite pole is approximated.
Zuck doesn’t care what the words are, just that there are words. The sinister aspect to this superficial polarisation is it conceals an underlying homogeneity of intent…
