the big, bad infinite
I've been doing an inordinate amount of reading and writing lately, much of it internet based, which makes me wonder whether the blog-frenzy is taking effluvia to a whole new level. Writing and communication goes in and out of circulation at a mindblowing pace. At the same time, at least as long as the internet and computer technology persists, we are creating unparalleled personal records, capturing time in dimensions Proust could never fathom.
Ah technology.
In her book in Why Modernism Failed, Susie Gablik talked about a concept she referred to as 'the bad infinite,' which she perceived to be an epidemic particular to modernism, in which there is so much (in her case art) available that an overwhelming relativism ensues. The internet is like one gargantuan chasm of the infinite, so much of it horrid, all of it reducible to machine code. At the end of the day there is no substance to any of it. But if you really think about it, that's language all around, really. Empty symbols with no substantive referents. If there were nobody left who spoke a human language, even the tomes of literature we have amalgamated into our canon would be only useful as toilet paper.
But in order not to fall into the trap of nihilism, it is necessary to pin a belief to one point that, almost as an issue of faith, one assumes to be true. All of this digital chatter is useful inasmuch as it connects individuals together at a point in time. That connection, as insubstantial as it is, is to some degree real and has direct, perceivable effects on the world.