Our senses are overrun. The world of man blazes at us images and sounds of a thousand storms, distilled into colors and calls found nowhere in nature. We, at least I, have gotten so used to it that I cannot even sleep without the radio on. We are constantly bombarded with visuals impossible to recreate outside a screen, concoct harmonies with instruments that exist only as digital patterns. And the drive is always toward more, more, unceasing, from the first moment we are introduced to a TV, it starts; modern toys need to be flashier, louder, than those of old, keep our attention for briefer times — things explode, things form from out of nothing, things mutate from one object to another. When it is quiet, we often find it is too quiet. Our eyes and ears have been juiced, and when that juice is cut off, we miss the helter skelter.
Very little impresses me, I find, not anymore. That is why the push toward brighter, faster, screaming higher and higher. Do you remember when things were amazing? I am far from that, anymore, I think, and getting farther. There will come a time when our children's children will only be wowed if the whole world were to blow up in their faces. Sensory overdrive: we have already created virtual worlds with their own laws, these games are getting more and more immersive, realer and realer. Movies explode before us, and rock 'n' roll gets harsher and grinds harder all the time. Will there be a time when we discover that we've had enough? Maybe. There might come a day when we slow down, but this is not that day. Prepare for louder before we all want quiet again. Perhaps only to find silence when the world has deafened us.
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7:52pm saturday, 15th november
Have you read Baudrillard on hyper-reality?
Stand
6:29am tuesday, 18th november
Jean Baudrillard: "Hyper Reality and the Media"?
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10:00am tuesday, 18th november
Yes. I haven't actually read it but read about it. The world is becoming more hyper real every day and more pointless. I feel it even though I live in the country and try not to watch TV.
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Stand