The New Arrogance
You can always tell when a social trend is irritating the elites - you start seeing stuff like this in the Time style pages or the magazine section:
"Connectivity is poverty" was how a friend of mine summarized Sterling's bold theme. Only the poor - defined broadly as those without better options - are obsessed with their connections. Anyone with a strong soul or a fat wallet turns his ringer off for good and cultivates private gardens that keep the hectic Web far away. The man of leisure, Sterling suggested, savors solitude, or intimacy with friends, presumably surrounded by books and film and paintings and wine and vinyl - original things that stay where they are and cannot be copied and corrupted and shot around the globe with a few clicks of a keyboard.
Loosely translated - "How dare the non-rich engage in anytime communications. That used to be the preserve of the wealthy!"
Virginia Heffernan needs to get over herself....
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Comments
Life imitates art--or, rather, Neal Stephenson
[Benjamin Pollack] April 20, 2009 9:46:22.837
Being rich, regardless of time and culture, is far less about sheer count of wealth than about showing that you can do things that most people cannot. In the past, that meant that the rich should be connected, because most people could not afford to be. Nowadays, it means that they should not, because most people cannot afford not to be. The plebs have to work to attract attention and build connections; the rich have the connections and information flow to them, and therefore can show their power and independence by deliberately moving themselves out of the flow.
Neal Stephenson, a superb writer—and frequently, a highly prescient one—hypothesized almost exactly this response from the elite in Diamond Age: the rich and powerful in that novel lead neo-Victorian lifestyles, complete with old-fashioned newspapers, making calls in person, riding horses, and creating buildings and devices out of wood, stone, and other natural materials. Because most people cannot afford to remove themselves from the interconnectedness of modern technology, the rich define themselves through near-ludditism. I'm not honestly surprised to see life imitating art on this one.