For the past couple weeks, Deaf Ear Record has obligingly humored my private nostalgia-fest by finding the CD versions of stuff that's been languishing in one of those briefcase-style cassette holders. Perhaps I'm not quite self-aware enough to know quite how banal and haphazard my musical tastes are, but I am grateful to T. and the gang for not batting an eyelash. (I joked on Facebook that a GenX vs. GenY smack-down was averted because I didn't have to call anybody "Indie McHipsterpants" for snarking at my choices.)
And speaking of Facebook, I've tripped over an odd parallel in reaching back into the past to curate one's present reality--at least when one's beyond a certain age. Case in point: Best friend H. introduced me to the Moody Blues compilation that's quietly playing counterpoint to the rain as I write. The tape deck munched my copy in the early 90s, so this is my first full listen-through in nearly twenty years. A few operatic flourishes get up my nose these days, but I have yet to facepalm.
Pair that thought with the way the can sometimes come to find you on social media (or is so much easier to find if you go looking for it) simply because of the other connections. Case in point: I saw the brother of J. (who was--in hindsight--the truest of my friends from middle school) friend up my friend from high school debate/Forensics, and within a couple of minutes had a friend request out to J. A couple days more brought a re-connection...and eventually more requests to re-connect by friends more loosely associated back in the day. As with music, past and present come to some sort of terms--but remain largely at our fingertips.
But with the immediacy also comes an unprecedented ability to filter. To uncheck the weaker songs cassettes made it too annoying to fast-forward through. To minimize the downside of friends by hiding the drunken/whiny/obnoxious/politically-incorrect posts from my feed as people never could while say, hanging out at a house party.
Think of how much attention we First World primates lavish upon the reality brought to us by gadgets whose data lives elsewhere, largely powered by software that makes it stupid-easy to cater to our own preferences. Perhaps, rather than grouching about the concept of "curated computing" at the hands of Steve Jobs, I might have done better to look in the mirror earlier to wonder how much curating ability is necessary to make shrines to ourselves of these little screens--and the "likes" and retweets and playlists and so forth they feed us.
Overall, I don't worry about it all that much--I've just a little too much faith in human beings for that. Not only their capacity to mash up and caption when they aren't creating something entirely new. But also their tendency to set those creations loose on the interwebs. Which I hope means that the digital shut-ins will always be outnumbered by those willing to leave in their wake the online equivalent of. say, an ice-sculpture, or flash mob performance in Grand Central Station, or bit of first-hand living history for children visiting a museum, or . . .
Certainly, we can curate our interactions in Web 2.0. But sending our handiwork out to be critiqued is another matter. That requires generosity of time and talent as well as the magnanimity to take feedback that can't be curated.
