This morning, the Internet was buzzing with images of monkeys waiting on customers in a Japanese sake house. I call this type of story Fast News. Much like fast food, which entices us with lesser versions of homemade fare, Fast News tempts us with easy-to-consume facsimiles of real news. After a while, both leave us feeling empty and wanting for more.
Fast News is appearing everywhere we look and unfortunately many confuse ubiquity with quality, and availability with desire.
In his book “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” Neil Postman maintained that Morse’s telegraph, which removed time and distance issues from the information-sharing process, “erased state lines” and “collapsed regions.” This happened, Postman wrote, at a “considerable cost.”
Postman quotes Henry David Thoreau, who stated in “Walden” that “We are in a great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”
In other words, just because we can share information almost instantly over a great many miles, does not mean this information is necessarily worth sharing.
Yet the purveyors of Fast News share away, one after the other. Monkey see, monkey do.
Fast News is appearing everywhere we look and unfortunately many confuse ubiquity with quality, and availability with desire.
In his book “Amusing Ourselves to Death,” Neil Postman maintained that Morse’s telegraph, which removed time and distance issues from the information-sharing process, “erased state lines” and “collapsed regions.” This happened, Postman wrote, at a “considerable cost.”
Postman quotes Henry David Thoreau, who stated in “Walden” that “We are in a great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.”
In other words, just because we can share information almost instantly over a great many miles, does not mean this information is necessarily worth sharing.
Yet the purveyors of Fast News share away, one after the other. Monkey see, monkey do.
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