Have you heard? I just read it on the BBC News website? Really? Yahoo says it won’t happen? Noooo! Well Ananova says it has a confirmed source? Reuters reported it this morning….
The news headlines zip across the screen, constantly changing, constantly being revised, and you watch the news shape and form into coherent stories right before your eyes. You can watch/read whilst an elderly man is mugged, then collapses, then is attacked, then dies. The headlines revolve as more information arrives.
It gets to the point that you are never really sure what is actually happening until the timeline and facts fall into place. That’s the problem, all this instant access to information isn’t helping us, it’s confusing us. Death tolls rise by the minute, eye witnesses are found and quoted then replaced by expert opinions. Rumours grow and evolve at a startling rate, as the news develops before your eyes.
I rarely comment on recent events here anymore, quite simply because I don’t follow the news as closely as I used to preferring the paper in the morning, the established stories at lunchtime and the headlines in the evening. My eyes flicker up the screen to the scrolling text declaring oil price rises, stabbings, convictions, death, murder, mutilation and more, and I force them back down. Down to something real, something with depth, something I can understand entirely in the now, rather than something I have to piece together as it expands in a myriad of possible new directions.
We live in THE information age and, frankly, sometimes I just want to stop the boat mid-stream and dive over into that cool, clear, empty water.