Thursday, May 17, 2012

Design and the Internet

I'm an internet junkie, I admit it. Sometimes, I don't realize where the day has gone, just because I have been too busy reading blogs,news,tweets,RSS feeds or watching videos.I should have a tool to regulate my time spent on the www. There has to be a point where it gets counter-productive.

It's the sheer glossiness and design of media content, all packed up in pretty little boxes that makes me sit in some kind of a stupor, ogling at the screen for hours on end. I become a sponge, soaking in everything the curators/bloggers out there want me to,sometimes making them writhe in pleasure if I happen to like,share or tweet a link a  my social media network.( It shows up on the stats, you see). 

Reflecting on it, it makes me wonder if most content on the internet today is like that well made 3 minute ad video; amazingly edited and presented, slick and communicating so much in the blink of an eye. These product/service/idea explanation videos are in a league of their own, meant to dazzle and mesmerize.But consider this,  do youtube views and facebook likes truly reflect the quality and importance of a project? I do believe that design is meant for the people, so their opinion should matter.What annoys me sometimes is the ridiculously low percentage of actual intelligent critical debate and discourse on a topic in comparison to the flash news sort of approach.

The internet and social media are great, I love them.When it starts to dictate terms about what is good and what is not, is when I feel slightly uneasy. It's like trusting an organic, unknown collective consciousness and not my own.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

And sometime when you are so much into it, you really don't worry about the authenticity of the stuff. That's a dangerous bit which happens to me.

mistsonthesea said...

That's true.If it makes for a good story over coffee, i'll probably bookmark it in my head, without going deep enough to test the authenticity.

Gill said...

I tried spending a day without internet. It's bloody damn hard. I'm completely reliant on the internet to get all my information. And it's scary that sometimes authenticity of the information I seek takes a back seat.