Waxing Poetically: Addressing Culture with a Twist of Poetry

If you understand this shirt logo above,then this post is for you!

*This piece was written in 2007 for helium.com as part of a forum discussion on media-driven entertainment. I’ve made few grammatical changes but the piece is 99% identical to the original.

What do you think a when you think of the phrase “modern society?” It could be that you think of electricity, cars, telephones, video games, computers and e-mail. You might think of the latest and greatest or most up to date gadget, device, software, and so forth. Merriam-Webster defines the word “modern” as 1 a: of, relating to, or characteristic of the present or the immediate past : contemporary b: of, relating to, or characteristic of a period extending from a relevant remote past to the present time
2: involving recent techniques, methods, or ideas : up-to-date
3capitalized : of, relating to, or having the characteristics of the present or most recent period of development of a language (http://m-w.com/dictionary/modern).

So now that we have defined the term, let’s elaborate shall we? Furthermore, how does this affect our entertainment choices? In recent times, let us say the past 30 years, we in the U.S. have seen great transition. In 1977 for example, we saw devices like 8-track music players, Coleco Vision and Atari video game systems, block lettering on network television and the earliest incarnations of HBO that likely was only viewed by a select group of customers. After all, Americans had only recently gotten used to color television, and now had the added attraction of cable to entice them and only the dream of George Lucas’s Star Wars to prophesy what was yet to come. By 1981, MTV hit the airwaves with a bunch of crazy haired Brits and synthesized music and we called it modern and “new wave.” By 1983, we were mesmerized by Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video, and we called it amazing. By 1984, we were introduced to the new Apple computer via a Super Bowl commercial in which we were told that we would find out why 1984 would not be like George Orwell’s version of 1984. People bought into the hype and bought the computers. They replaced their records with CDs and their dial-based watches with digital ones. This fervor fueled the fire of sci-fi films such as 1982’s Tron and 1985’s Back to the Future, films in which we were told that technology would take us to places we’d never been before while exploring themes such as computer-based warfare and car-based time travel, and why not? Americans after all, had always prided themselves on being dreamers, innovators and inventors.

By the late 80s, we had explored phone technology, and come up with such remarkable things as cordless phones, and Nintendo. By the 90s, these two would morph themselves into cellular telephones, and Nintendo’s cooler older brother, Super Nintendo. Home video renters and closed-circuit TV patrons now had the option of pay-per-view and watching such epic cultural events as Wrestlemania from the comfort of their own home. Basic cable now offered us 50 plus channels in the early Apple word processors had been taken over by Bill Gates’ Windows software. Later came the advent of America Online, chat rooms and instant messaging. Now anyone in the world could send a message to anyone else in the world with a few strokes of the keyboard in their bedroom. 1999 saw the creation of the Napster file sharing program that allowed any person anywhere to share music over the Internet for free without the need of CDs or record stores, or money for that matter. Our cell phones that were once the size of bananas were now smaller than our credit cards and were not only capable of completing our phone calls, but also could easily snap pictures or store video games.

In 2008, 30-plus years from our starting point, we stand at the apex of dominating media throughout the world. What once were were afterthoughts after a bad sci-fi movie have now become real. 30 years ago, most people only had five channels to choose from on TV. In demand entertainment meant that a little boy could ride his bike whenever he wanted on a Saturday, given his chores were done. Instant messaging consisted of telling the person next to us what we wanted to say in the same instant we wanted to say it. If we wanted to have a friend in another country. We had to actually take the trouble to mail a letter and write it with our own pencil gripping hands. We now live in times where if our computer is two seconds slow, we complain. we moan because we can’t watch You Tube. God forbid there be a power outage! Our cell phones would only work if they were charged… No Tetris for more than an hour. Our e-mails would be delayed, thereby delaying our packages of DVDs, messages, and favorite songs and again, no You Tube. There would be no John Madden Football to play on Xbox. Alas, we may have to play, actual football actually outside! It’s gotten the point where the average kid watches so much television that Nickelodeon actually had to devote a day to kids playing outside!

So in closing, we have indeed become too obsessed by media driven entertainment. I’m guilty of it too. So maybe we should practice talking in public, instead of online, play actual sports, instead of EA Sports, stop watching reality TV and start living reality. These might be novel ideas, but hey, one never knows when they’ll catch on.

Until next time… wax technologically!

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