The sands of time, or a rush of stupidity?
Last night, Paul McCartney closed the Grammy Awards. (An event that I actually watched part of, for once, because it featured the reunion of “The Beach Boys.” Please note the quotation marks, being of the opinion as I am that The Beach Boys died with Carl Wilson.) During his performance, lots of people jumped on Twitter to ask this question:
I want to be charitable and assume that most of the people who asked this are children. I like to think that adults, especially adults with access to Twitter and, therefore, the internet, would jump onto said internet and use either Google or Wikipedia or, well, almost anything, and Look It Up. Whereupon they would learn that Paul McCartney is the most successful songwriter in history and that he was a member of something called The Beatles.
But then I think that even if these are children, wouldn’t even children know that if they are holding a device that connects them to unlimited information — then maybe they could use it properly to gather such information as they’re seeking? And that tweeting out the question “Who TF is Paul McCartney” isn’t as good as, again, Google or Wikipedia or, well, almost anything else.
Some years before the recent relaunch of “Star Trek,” I told my friend Larry, who is this universe’s foremost expert on “Star Trek,” that almost none of my grad students knew who Kirk or Spock were, so I’d stopped using them as an example in my lectures. He couldn’t believe it — and it seemed incredible to me as well, I have to admit — but it was true. I would mention Kirk or Spock and get blank stares in return. Their cultural significance had diminished. Now the person who is probably the foremost popular musician of the past 50 years is going unrecognized.
One bright spot: Maybe at some point, we’ll all be able to forget “The Macarena.”
February 14th, 2012 at 1:55 pm
Truly, our society is in decline.