Finally got enough sleep over the weekend to get round to doing some of the things I need to catch up on - such as this website. Everyone comments on new parents being tired - its not like you imagine though - like for instance the tiredness from staying up all night the night before. Its more a permenant state of being - the last few weeks I feel like I've been in a Zen like state of simply Being - no abstract thought - just doing stuff. Still love being a father though, more than anything.
As befits someone with little in the way of a functioning brain I've been following Big Brother to some extent (its great wall paper during the day when we are doing stuff with Milo (feeding,playing etc.) - no plot, no worry if you miss great chunks of it). One of the things that has really struck me, in particular from reading Big Brother Forums is how simplistic the response is. Critical thought does appear but the vast majority of reposnse are very strong (people Love or Hate things - actions Ruin the show - the producers should be sacked for actions people don't like). It occurs to me that a good deal of our media is like this - a response that is not imediate or highly emotive requires too much attention from the viewer and hence becomes boring. The only place this doesn't really happen is Radio 4 and maybe BBC4.
This is not a doom and gloom observation - its just the way things are - our society is now going to fast for people to stop and think. It will be interesting to see if this has an effect on the rate of developemnt of civillisation: Will there still be a small number of people pushing things forward able to impose (with the right spin) anything they feel like on the mass population (ie. genetic engineering etc.). The mass population will of course not have the intellectual machinary to question - the media will question things but only if a short and snappy argument (NO or YES) can be made. The alternative scenario is that the rate of development of civillisation will slow down until people catch up. I am sure there are other scenarios as well.
Hmm - that last paragraph wasn't where I intended to go at all with this. Oh well. Where I was going was an idea I had for a BBC4 version of Big Brother: Still a sealed house and still the same imprisoned contestents and still a period of time. However on the walls are a set of white boards with a set of rules - these rules are a variation on Peter Subers Nomic. The rules will have additions from the basic set to allow for audience participation and adding general house rules. The idea of nomic is that playing the game is done by voting for and trying to get passed - new rules or amendments to existing rules. The contestants would manipulate the rules and each other until one of them was an eventual winner. It would of course be a lot more like watching chess or perhaps political debate than the current big brother but it would add a much needed intellectual component. Of course very few people would watch it which is where we came in...
Media wise I have a growing pile of books to read - non of which I have had the time or energy for - I don't always finish one New Scientist before the next one comes out (an hour or so's reading at most). Been reading the The Bromeliad for bed time reading - as with all Pratchett most entertaining and well written. Been listening to lots of Brian Eno for some reason but the CD of the moment is Stoke by Phillip Jeck. Played on ancient record players (the sort that have built in speakers and do 78 & 16 rpm) it manages to invoke strange nostalgic sound worlds for places you have never quite known. Oddly it also manages to touch on some of the ideas Moby uses without any concept of pop.
Posted by Mark at July 8, 2002 11:19 AM