Out of the many good things about digital communication and social networks – such as giving voice to the dispossed (if they are at least possessed of access to a network) – it strikes me that one thing is still missing: the power of silence. Silence not as emptiness, or the absence of thought/action/voice, but silence as an acknowledgement of moment shared, thought understood, the grace of being at ease with someone without speaking…
All that the digital networks have to show for silence is either a literal absence, or the pat and overused ‘emoticons’ that simplify variations of human expressions to a caricature. When we’re talking in the digital world, unless someone’s talking back at us, we don’t know who’s listening… and how’s listening… We have no way of knowing whether we’ve touched another soul, or caused them to think the unthinkable, explore the hitherto unexplored, or even just nod in agreement.
In that way, for all their democratic potential, digital social networks have more in common with traditional one-way broadcasting than with face-to-face human interaction. And it’s no wonder then that in order to be heard, or connected, we have to shout increasingly louder in the digital world: often making caricatures of ourselves, in order to resemble easily identifiable emoticons – today I’m sad, happy, excited, in love… reducing ourselves, and our complex emotions, to a single sign.
