Living in the electronic age.
“Just as hysteria was mobilized in social relations by a culture caught in the last century in a crisis of public and private life, narcissism is now mobilized in social relations by a culture deprived of belief in the public and ruled by intimate feeling as a measure of the meaning of reality.” Richard Sennett
“Thinking about electronic intrusions into our lives, both welcome and unwelcome, as well as the moral and psychological consequences of electronic intimacy and the boundaries of the self in the information age.” James Bowman
Is it simply a question of narcissism?
Narcissism, as in excessive or erotic interest in oneself and/or one's physical appearance.
• Psychology; extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one's own talents and a craving for admiration, as characterizing a personality type.
• Psychoanalysis; self-centeredness arising from failure to distinguish the self from external objects, either in very young babies or as a feature of mental disorder . Narcisissm 101
“In a YouTube world, literacy will have vanished and with it knowledge. Visuals and graphics can convey information, but they rarely proffer organizing principles and theories. They are explicit and thus shallow and provide no true insight. They demand little of the passive viewer and, therefore, are anti-intellectual. In this last characteristic, they are true to the Internet and its anti-elitist, anti-expert, mob-wisdom-driven spirit. Visuals encourage us to outsource our "a-ha" moments and the formation of our world view and to entrust them to the editorial predilections of faceless crowds of often ignorant strangers” Sam Vankin, PhD
Pictures of me for the world to see, remember how it used to be?