Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london
Newspapers are on the verge of extinction but you have to ask yourself – is that such a terrible thing? They pretend to be impartial providers of information but are anything but. Politically motivated, opinion pushing, fear fuelling, hatred stoking , rumour propagating, remorseless slandering…and that’s just their good points!  If you ever get a chance, read “The Establishment and how they get away with it” by Owen Jones and you will see how self-serving & agenda driven these publications are…not saying the internet is better option for objective truth but at least we could save a few trees if they all went the way of the dinosaurs.
If you are looking for objective truth, the holy grail of information consumption, good luck. Its in very thin supply and its getting harder for us to work out what’s gospel and what’s not. Because we are bombarded with a relentless feed we do our best to consume as much as we possibly can but consequently our brains now have less time and less energy to disseminate what’s fact and what’s not.
As a result we tend to just accept more and more what we are reading without using our cognitive skills to work out whether its true or not. We’re just too overloaded to be able to dissect what’s being shoved in front of us. This is a problem. There is so much shit written on the Internet which is uncorroborated yet presented as fact we are drowning in a  sea of misinformation. So what do you believe? Who do you trust? You want the truth? You can’t find the truth! (please say in your head like Jack Nicholson – even thump a desk for effect if you can)
So how to solve this modern conundrum? Don’t take everything/anything at face value. Use your powers of analysis. Question your sources and spend more time on less so you are able to dissect not just accept wholesale what you are reading. There are apparently only so many times your synapses can fire in a single day before you get neural fatigue. If you burn it all up looking at endless feeds you won’t have any power left to work out if you’re being fed nonsense when it comes your way. You won’t need to do that here obviously. This is a bullshit free zone. Yes siree.  I’m a one-stop fact machine. Umm…(clears throat)…I think I’ll be off now…(nervous whistling)
if you would like to see some other photographs I have taken of newspapers please click here
Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london
p.s I took down and re-uploaded the film I posted on friday in case anyone can’t get link to work. An hour after I posted it up I read an article about ‘smombies’ which it turns out is the appointed name for smartphone zombies so thought I would get on board (never fight the zeitgeist) and have re-named it “Rise of the Smombies!” – you can now see it here
p.p.s my next film will be entitled “Rise of the Simon Cowell Sex Dwarf Zombies” (it actually probably won’t but now I have seen that in print I kinda compelled to make it – watch this space)
(for those who need to know: it will take you 1min 33 sec to watch the vid, 2mins 45 seconds to read article, 30 seconds to skim, 2 seconds to share)
front story:
I saw a blind man exiting the London underground one day and as he got up the stairs a woman bumped straight into him because she was on her phone. She actually looked up for a second and tutted at him before carrying on. I watched and then saw him get hit by another person, also on their phone. They didn’t even bat an eyelid and marched on. I went up to him and asked him if he needed a hand across the road. As we walked I asked him if he’d noticed people bumping into him more and he said he had and I told him it was because they were all on their phones. Ah, is that what it is he said…when you have become more blind than the blind it might be time to take note.
back story:
I originally had the idea to make this film as part of a presentation that I was approached to give at a TED event in Havana after they saw my ‘death of conversation’ Ted talk. The organiser informed me they didn’t have wifi or smartphones yet in Cuba and very limited internet access although they were desperate for it, especially the younger generation. I thought it would be  interesting to show them how it had affected our society in the most all-encompassing and unexpected of ways. To be able to highlight some of the negative aspects of constant internet access to people who hadn’t experienced it yet would be like going back in time to our own society and being able to prevent some of the detrimental effects such as social withdrawal, disconnection and addiction before they  took hold.
I thought it would be an amazing  opportunity to be able to possibly steer a society to use this incredible technology without it completely taking over their lives and minds. Sadly I never got to go due to budget issues but decided to make the film anyway rather than leave it on a mental shelf gathering dust. So I spent a week surreptitiously filming & playing chicken with these zombie phone walkers in the west end and found the level of digital engagement compared to reality based interaction quite staggering. I also rather enjoyed trying to walk into these people having got relatively fed up trying to avoid them on a day to day basis.
I know have been fairly (ok, heavily) vocal about the (mis)use of smartphones but for the record I am not anti-technology in any way, but I am very much pro-living and I feel it is really getting in the way.
I will leave you with this thought..when you are lying on your deathbed you will be reminiscing about the life you led, the people you met, the experiences you had..you will not remember even one of those millions of minutes you spent looking at a screen.
According to a U.K survey we check our phones 221 times a day or the equivalent of every 4.3 minutes so all I’m saying is maybe ask yourself on any of those 221 occasions on any given day..could I maybe skip this one and wait another 4.3 minutes?
Me and my camera in my home town, my capital city, my london
..an exclamation mark after every word and one massive one in front? Bit excessive me recks. And with a statement this strong it barely needs punctuating. Should I be worried? I mean, I eat quite a lot of hula hoops…is death on the way?
Hope you enjoyed this week’s collection of misspelt, grammatically incorrect non-sensical wall based statements. They will all soon be featuring in my upcoming photography book “Misspelt, grammatically incorrect non-sensical wall based statements Vol 1” – catchy huh?
