With our steady diet of media, we have no idea what the ramifications are of this consumption. Is there any such thing as the improper use of media? We may have thought so when we were kids, when television was rationed by parents who probably knew a thing or two. But today, we have matured into adults who constantly feed on the streaming flow of pixels. It was bad enough when the remote control was invented and we could click our way through the channels, but today, the constantly shifting changes in media sources bombard us from multiple devices: our phones, tablets, laptops, cameras, watches, televisions, cars, etc. We are not only changing the channels, we are cycling through devices that scale from the miniature to the jumbo.
Is it safe? Who knows? And furthermore, who cares? The drumbeat of the pulse of media is relentless, it’s hypnotic, seductive, and clearly uncontrollable. There is no slowing it down, unless of course you care to take a timeout. But how long can you do that before you must check your Twitter feed, your email, or the swoosh of another text message. It’s Pavlovian and its reflexive. It’s become part of our DNA.
It’s like water.