Monday, August 13, 2012

Cabbage Patch Dolls and Golliwogs in Cyberspace.

Many of us may not even remember those quaint dolls made of cloths or knitted in wool, a cherished childhood tradition. We had relationships with them, but later grew out of it. Remember the weekends when we would grab the picnic basket, sun umbrellas and head out for an intimate weekend on the beach or woods with the family and friends. It was an iconic image of weekends and leisure, the sense of a vanishing world is painfully insistent in our technology driven lives today. With the ubiquitous Blackberry and Smartphone we embrace digital technology to fill the void of intimacy and warmth of relationship thats has vanished forever. Dolls, picnics and weekends at the beach with family and friend are passé and even at parties – physically they are elsewhere as they tap and text on their cell phones. Children have difficulty in differentiating the real and authentic from the inanimate. There is a dark possibility that cherished cultural artifacts and traditions will disappear to a point where, we prefer shallow relationships over actual intimacy. Cultures and places changed beyond recognition by social media. We have a fragile sense of self; we are becoming terrified of intimacy and flee from the old life long gone by … and the old analogue world being dismantled. We can never go back within the flow of time, from which it was removed. We turn to the digital world, mute the sound of our hearts and emotional lives and present a false persona online. We become that person; we get confused, disoriented going into a grayish dark world of monitors hoping to find a digital soul mate sooner or later. -Vinay-

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