rogue

an old man who could barely walk was holding a heavy flag on the corner of university and evans on my way to work this morning.

his wife held a sign on the other side of the street reading “no more dead soldiers in iraq”

should they have carried booklets more precisely explaining their position along with the facts as many talk radio personalities require of their opponents? do they need to go check their information a few more times?

no!

we are told to study until we act, but since when in history does a person need anything more than a broken heart to run into the street and scream at persecutors to stop destroying life? we live in a highly intellectual time in a country blessed with information at the speed of light. but this has caused a strange change in us. you’d think we would sit by our computers and blog about our current discrepancies with the government, citing sources, tagging videos, including links to similar posts by friends…

but we don’t. there is no satisfaction in it. we are the first generation to hate our media source as much as the problems they report on. why would we strive to become yet another biased source of false information? we are surprised, still figuring out, unsure of the power of and most of all embarrassed with our technology.

we have a few options-

spit an intelligent few paragraphs into the black abyss the internet has created in hopes of it reaching three or four people who ‘like’ or ‘dig’ it. you try to feel good about the few hours you spent heaving your soul into the page and all the impact it will never have.

use modern social network technology to share your views. create a ’cause’ invite a thousand friends and raise a hundred dollars to put towards…

forget about the the giant brick wall you stand up against and take a nap next to it. other people are trying. other people might succeed.

or do you just revert to good old fashioned protest in the streets? hold a sign with a simple message a few people will see.

on a street-corner – a man stands

‘peace’ – reads his flag

some honks in support – some pass by unknowing

but also many voices raised in anger

-

“wrong” – “stay away”

he is told

“old” – “diseased”

he is called

-

a simple message held because he is dumb?

no rebuttals to the cries for lack of intelligence?

is he silent for reason of being wrong?

or is simplicity the genius of his silent song?

the abysmal depths of electronic impulses and binary traffic jams guide us almost as much as they allow us to discover for our own.

i’ve set up shop here in a relatively cheap part of the neighborhood and i’ve done little in the way of advertise, yet people always seem to drop by as they meander past on the sidewalk.

i’d like to think of the future of new media like this. with the entire world at our fingertips we choose to wander from one place to another. these is no possible way to take in the big picture all at once so we find little bits and pieces we find interesting instead. could news eventually transform into this model? instead of listening to the filtered news nightly, we can find it from the front lines. sure this brings up issues of biases and unprofessionalism, but what do we gain from it?

does this say anything about the economy of the internet, or is it just wishful thinking on my part? i don’t know. but i think we might all find out soon enough. if you aren’t thinking about all this already, maybe you should be.

newspapers will  prove to be the first fallen brick amongst a wall of media we will soon see vanish before our eyes. we have no idea when they will go, we have no idea who will be next and we have no idea if anything solid will ever replace them.

this fear stems from a frenzy of confusion and unknowns. who’s battling the newspapers? who’s trying to take over their revenue and readership? uh… the internet? what does that mean?

if we could define the internet, even just the small fraction that is killing newspaper media, even the smallest portion that has stolen enough readers from the rocky mountain news to justify all of the lost jobs; then maybe we could understand where we are headed.

internet press, wikipedia, i could throw sources at you all day and i wouldn’t even be able to compartmentalize most of them beyond a broad definition – blogs. where do you get your daily input? exactly.

are we moving back to a more primitive community? why go out to the biased big-media when you can jump from one home to another listening to private biases give their opinions and then drop a bit of response yourself? will the cnn preaching finally give way to a town hall meeting?

this revolution is not a quiet one, and it has taken jobs and it has taken down corporations. if the internet is the true democracy run directly by the people with little chance for executive interference will it ever stop? or is there an endgame defined by the very ideals that put it into place that will continue until anarchy has dominated and the world as a whole moves independent of legislation and in unison with one-another as a giant mass?

is this a battle of small vs large, or just free electronic media vs concrete media?

what turns a dream away from reality? do we deny ourselves what we truly want to be, or do we rediscover what it is we wanted in the first place?

how many astronauts feel accomplished and fulfilled? was their dream different… more vivid than others who never embarked on the journey?

how many accountants grew up with a different vision? have they resigned to a paycheck, or does their work fulfill a part of them?

-

i do not think every person can be fulfilled by a career, but i do believe that an activity we spend upwards of sixty hours a week pursuing better connect with a part of our being. whether it’s a connection of logics or creativity is up to the observer, but there is no doubt that what we spend the majority of our waking hours doing has a great effect on the quality of our life.

is it too much to ask that it gives us something back?