My First Goon Squad Post

Excerpt from the 2020s portion of A Visit From The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan:

"No one says 'viral' anymore," Lulu said. "I mean, maybe thoughtlessly, the way we still say 'connect' and 'transmit'--those old mechanical metaphors that have nothing to do with how information travels. See, reach isn't describable in terms of cause and effect anymore: it's simultaneous. It's faster than the speed of light, that's actually been measured. So now we study particle physics."

The above passage from page 257 makes my head spin and hurt. Lulu, the young assistant versed in the new kind of marketing taking place in the book, lives in a totally different cultural/technological (by "/" I hope to also mean they're merging) moment than I think I'll ever be able to live in. So if I don't think I will be able to keep up forever, do I think that I'll be able to survive in that world?

The answer is: yes. In the future we'll be able to survive without being totally up-to-date with technology. The world has worked like that since the beginning of civilization: not everybody is living in the same age. What stopped us before was connection. Now we're all connected, but the actual technology is now just moving at such breakneck speed. The ages themselves will be come more quickly than ever before. So part of the future is going to be people willfully living in different technological cultures because they don't want to have to keep up, and it being possible for everyone to exist on a certain "base level" one, and some people will prefer to use more, some people less, etc., with different sort of socio-economic hopes/norms in each category. Or just technology will so wholly swallow and engulf culture that culture becomes constantly trading in lifestyle and Way of Thinking for a new one every few years. A world Dominated By Fad.