the way of communication
a letter from back in the early 1990s. i feel like this whenever i'm on vacation
[T]he immense hypercommunication industry of portable phone and cellular phone, satellite dish and call waiting, of fax, beeper, modem, answering filters, and voice-activated recorders--all those oyster shell-colored, plastic-covered chip devices that turn the cititzen into hacker, plugged into everyone everywhere--"I am because I am accessible"--does not, repeat, not, put an end to my aloneness but rather intensifies it.
If I must be networked in order to be, then on my own I am out of the loop, out of communication, null and void, nowhere. I can't be reached. If to be means to be reachable, then in order to be I must stay networked. Result: the contemporary syndrome, communication addiction
...
Let's keep clear the distinction between the vertical connection downwards, deeps touching deeps, and the horizontal connection outwards, beeps touching beeps. The tiny microchips, so light and fast, are the thin silicon wings of Hermes the divine messenger... Our civilization has taken him over into its monotheism, a one-sided Hermes hyermania--and therefore concretized because one-sided--the hyperactivation of a single God. The subtlety is lost in the yes-or-no of information thinking. And we are moralized by this new Hermetic madness into slogans like: get plugged in; connect, only connect; never mind the message, it's the medium; keep networking. Info bytes, twenty-second bites; government reduced to "spin control." The Persian Gulf War shows that the incredibly difficult task of controlling Mars, the God of war, depends in our time managing Hermes. As information is our new God, Hermes has replaced Yahweh, and, like him, Hermes too has become a God of war.
James Hillman, from We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy--And the World's Getting Worse
[T]he immense hypercommunication industry of portable phone and cellular phone, satellite dish and call waiting, of fax, beeper, modem, answering filters, and voice-activated recorders--all those oyster shell-colored, plastic-covered chip devices that turn the cititzen into hacker, plugged into everyone everywhere--"I am because I am accessible"--does not, repeat, not, put an end to my aloneness but rather intensifies it.
If I must be networked in order to be, then on my own I am out of the loop, out of communication, null and void, nowhere. I can't be reached. If to be means to be reachable, then in order to be I must stay networked. Result: the contemporary syndrome, communication addiction
...
Let's keep clear the distinction between the vertical connection downwards, deeps touching deeps, and the horizontal connection outwards, beeps touching beeps. The tiny microchips, so light and fast, are the thin silicon wings of Hermes the divine messenger... Our civilization has taken him over into its monotheism, a one-sided Hermes hyermania--and therefore concretized because one-sided--the hyperactivation of a single God. The subtlety is lost in the yes-or-no of information thinking. And we are moralized by this new Hermetic madness into slogans like: get plugged in; connect, only connect; never mind the message, it's the medium; keep networking. Info bytes, twenty-second bites; government reduced to "spin control." The Persian Gulf War shows that the incredibly difficult task of controlling Mars, the God of war, depends in our time managing Hermes. As information is our new God, Hermes has replaced Yahweh, and, like him, Hermes too has become a God of war.
James Hillman, from We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy--And the World's Getting Worse