Absurdity and the Internet

I can appreciate the absurdity of the internet as a means of expressing nostalgia for "the simpler times." (Yet another confirmation that this world is rife with contradictions...) At the same time that technological devices and the internet's prominence in many people's daily lives is representative of how much society has changed in a relatively short period of time, they also provide an avenue through which some attempt to re-connect to those very aspects of life that have been altered.

The shifts accompanying this "digital age" become a reflection of societal values, while also calling into question some essential, very human questions that people have, perhaps, always asked (and maybe always will). The questions may be the same, even though the contextual framework may have shape-shifted.

Take, for example, the app(lication)s and websites that can "turn" people's photos into polaroids (aka inserting a white border around the image). As analog film slowly becomes a thing of the past (not fully obsolete by any means, and yet dis-proportionately unfavorable in comparison to its digitized format), I find it interesting that people are still yearning for the look of something that they may no longer value in its "authentic" form. Of course, this elicits consideration as to the very nature of "authenticity" not to mention the question of what part of something makes it valuable--is it form, process, even function? Like so many things, perhaps it's just a matter of subjectivity...

As an adult, I can look back on my childhood and reminisce on the days of phone books, card catalogs, dial-up internet (and maybe some vague re-collections of a time without internet), even pay-phones. Though a retrospective reflection on the relative simplicity of those days can elicit a sense of something having been lost, there's also much to say about what has been gained...
For one thing, the more tasks relegated to machines, the more choice is freed up for people.

With the progression of time comes change—whether reflected in culture, values, aesthetics, etc.—though much of humanity's essential experiences seem to remain relatively the same (when considered within the given context, of course). In some ways, it's an exercise in recognizing the nuances and varying degrees of potential experience, the intricacies of this "modern life." I suppose that part of this is acknowledging the paradox of wistfulness for a certain simplicity, for a time when things could just be, to exist within a modality of perception that necessitates something having to pass through a technological lens in order to be validated.

I continue to vacillate between contemplating what these changes in culture signify (or how much has really changed at all) and appreciating the cyclical drama of life's dichotomies playing themselves out.