Don't Stand So Close To Me

All generations are no longer created equal in technology. For GIs, and perhaps older Silents, their first atomizing technology was radio, and perhaps a record player. Film also existed of course, but it was strictly a social medium, as you watched films (and got the latest news about the war) in a movie theater. If you were born in the mid-80s, a PC connected to the internet was the first personal technology of your life--one where you could pursue your own interests. If you were born in the early 90s, your first personal technology might have been an iPhone. Boomers and GenX had computers but no internet, but still had other isolating technologies, but they were still "hot" in the McLuhanesque sense--you couldn't "touch" (interact) with them because they were hot. The Internet made everything "cool"--even the anti-social aspects.

In the teen years of all generations beyond the GI Generation, people could enter their own private worlds through media using their own radio, telephone, television, or computer in their own bedroom. Even diary and letter writing were a way to escape into a private world before electronic media. All that ended with the internet, a place that seems as private as your own TV in your room (hot), but entirely public (cool). Now with self-quarantine happening, we realize we actually don't like to be alone with our media. We want to go to the theater like they did in 1945.

The aftermath of 9/11 would have been much different if social media existed then. I suppose it can be said that 9/11 wouldn't have happened if TV didn't exist. Media always plays a huge role in world events which are the "messages" that technologies make possible. TV was evidence that society had grown decadent, yet TV was useful in reporting what was happening in real-time. It was already "reality TV" in the early 70s with cinema verite like An American Family, which depicted the negative effects of technology on how families lived. I doubt the Louds ever watched TV together, or the film never showed it.