Drowning In Mediae

As a preface to this post, I'd like to inform you all that it has been decided that media as a plural term to describe multiple tools for storing and communicating data / information is just not doing it for me. Therefore, we will introduce the new, somehow more satisfying, plural form - mediae.

Has there ever been this much mediae? I don't think there has been. There are, of course, the conventional forms; TV, noose-papers, trashy magazines, outdoor displays, etc.

Enter internet stage right. Whoosh! Zing! Rhu-ka-puh-zazz! There she is; the best, spankiest media form ever to grace humanity. For a good number of years there it is generally thought of as one single form of media.

Similar to the Behaviouralists, those of us who thought this were proved wrong! Completely wrong! Email is as distinctive a form of media to a networking site as a hand-written letter is to a speech at an industry networking event. Thus the internet can only be described in terms of mediae. All the various little subsets of mediae are mind-bogglingly numerous.

Email(s). Blog. Facebook. LinkedIn. Message forums. News. (So much news.) Last but not least - The Twits. I don't know about anyone else, but I can't keep up with them all. There is too much information that I want to receive, and too many channels that it frequents!!!

Overload!!! Mega-information overload!!!!!!

Shutting.....down.

Public service announcement to OZ-e government - there ain't no need for mandatory censorship over here. The constraints of work firewalls, lack of home internet solution, attention span, and a mere 24 hours in a day are its own kind of censorship.

In other words - don't you dare automatically censor my internet. You'll inevitably fuck up what you're trying to accomplish, and although I ofttimes these days get the feeling of overwhelmededness by the masses and masses of internet media, I reserve the right to be overwhelmed.

And that's my final word on that. I don't approve of government imposed media censorship for the benefit of individuals.

It is interesting to consider the effects of increased access to reams upon reams (or screens upon screens) of information though. Does it actually hinder people to have that much ready access in that they become disinterested in looking for it and are more likely to ignore information that's right in front of them because there's so damn much of it? Are there more cases of analysis paralysis as a result of pervasive mediae? And are people sacrificing doing to get in more media-ing? Where do the waterfalls of information with increasing degrees of pressure carry us?

These are the mysteries.

(Twilight Zone theme plays and screen fades to black)