Être ou ne pas être

11/03/2010

The two most important discoveries of my week are Tom Ford's film A Single Man and the book You Are Not A Gadget by Jaron Lanier. One is a glossy melodrama directed by a fashion designer, while the other is a reflection on the digital revolution by one of its leading gurus. Not much in common between the two, you might think. Well, you'd be wrong.

The title of Ford's film is deliberately misleading. The movie is not an advertisement for single living, but rather an argument for the necessity of human connection. It suggests that isolation is soul destroying. The film plays a clever trick with the light. When the hero (played by Colin Firth) feels lonely, the light is grey and bleak. But as soon as he comes into contact with another human being, the screen is suffused with warmth. The message is simple and optimistic: we need other people if we are to feel truly alive.

Lanier's book expresses a similar idea in a different context. He fears that the Internet, with its emphasis on crowds (Wikipedia, the hive mind, and the digitalisation of culture) is killing individual creativity. He urges us to express our difference, to stand up as individuals against the blandness of technology. Lanier is not against the Internet, but he is against the creeping death of the authorial voice. He urges us to assert our humanity, rather than blending into the crowd.