Freakishly hectic days. And that’s my excuse for not posting anything in the last couple of days. For a while, each day has been freakishly hectic but it is easier to write on somedays than on others.
Since monday, I have been meaning to write on a couple of digital humanities themes. I also wanted to respond at some length to a some comments too. Hopefully, this weekend, I can return to Rajkumar movies. Time to catch up on the backlog on a freakishly cold friday evening.
Let us begin with a column that Richard Cohen wrote in the WAPO entitled Digital Lynch Mob. Cohen commented on the nearly 3,500 emails he received in three days response to an earlier column on Stephen Colbert’s funny performance at the White House Correspondent’s dinner. Cohen didn’t find Colbert funny and said so. His respondents said: ‘Cohen, you suck, Colbert rocks’.
The content of these responses is not what interests me. But the fact of the response, where the medium itself is the message and its form. As Cohen points out, many of the respondents appear to have been ‘egged on’ by bloggers; it wouldn’t surprise me if the content of the responses had also been provided or borrowed from a few (blogger) sources. But the sheer numbers involved in such cases and more importantly, the lynching mentality seems to steer politics, both on the right and the left, in directions, which make politics an art in accomplishing nothing. Anyone with a computer and DSL connection now has a voice and wants to influence an agenda of a party or collective that he (or she) cares about. In such a scenario, I am curious to see what the response of the politcal parties would be and how the 2006 elections might turn out.
Two points that I want to make explicitly. On the digital front, what we need to recognize now more than ever is the steady questioning of distinctions that we have been used to, traditionally. For instance, Cohen’s status as the pundit using WAPO pulpit can no longer be taken for granted, even if it has not eroded completely. Clearly, 3,500 emails (even if he doesn’t read them) influence the way he (or any other pundit) would comment on our world. I have read in the last week itself many MSM journalist/bloggers making references to hundreds of emails that they have received. While this new virtual interactive (?) community might be fun and offer a sense of affirmation, this is still very new for us to realize how it might influence punditry itself.
Similarly, the impact on politics is also unknown. How will Hillary respond to the shrill digital voices from the left? How will other seekers of public office attempt to position themselves, given the enthusiastic and organized Internetters?
It is no fun to say it is hard to even speculate but it will be fun to watch it all unfold.
PS: Speaking of politics, this week, several major states went to poll in India. The continued success of the Left Front in West Bengal is as puzzling as the anti-incumbency sentiment in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
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